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I'm finally ready to share my review of The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. This is a mammoth story (and mammoth book - 724 pages) that begins in 1900 with the marriage of a 12 year old girl to an older widower in India and though this might sound ominous their relationship matures into a loving legacy and most of the characters throughout the decades that follow are somehow connected to this family and certainly to the land that is so beautifully described:
"It is a child's fantasy world of rivulets and canals, a latticework of lakes and lagoons, a maze of backwaters and bottle-green lotus ponds; a vast circulatory system because, as her father used to say, all water is connected. It spawned a people - Malayalis - as mobile as the liquid medium around them, their gestures fluid, their hair flowing, ready to pour out laughter as they float from this relative's house to that one's, pulsing and roaming like blood corpuscles in a vasculature, propelled by the great beating heart of the monsoon."
I absolutely loved the first 500 pages and even took this chunk of a hardback book on two trips through the airport as I traveled for work! Somewhere between page 500 and 600, I felt like the author introduced too many ancilary characters that didn't really drive the story and weren't easy to connect with and keep up with. Additionally the politics of India in the 1950s following the end of British rule dominated the story and seemed to force the author to "tell rather than show" in order to explain to the reader the subtleties of the political changes. It's hard to explain, but there were conversations in this section that felt very forced and out of sync with the majority of the story.
Fortunately, the last 100 or so pages came together with a plot twist or two that I didn't really anticipate and I ended feeling quite satisfied. I also ended with a list of words that I need to look up as I kept an index card as a bookmark and wrote down some of the words that were totally new to me (I'll be contributing to the "What did you look up" thread!)
The author is a physician as are some of the characters in the book so he does not shy away from some pretty graphic (though beautifully written) descriptions of childbirth, injuries and leprosy. If that is off-putting to you, this might not be your book. None of the descriptions are meant to be gory nor do they feel gratuitous, but medicine in the early 1900s wasn't always pretty!
I have heard that the audio version is lovely as Abraham Verghese reads it, but I just didn't have it in me to listen to 30 hours of an audio book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to immerse themselves in a beautiful family saga with characters that you won't soon forget.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 5 days ago)
35,622 posts, read 17,953,728 times
Reputation: 50641
There's A Hole in my Bucket by Royd Tolkien.
Non fiction. Story of two brothers, great-grandsons of JRR Tolkien of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series. One brother, Mike, develops ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and writes a bucket list of things he wants his beloved brother Royd to do after Mike's death.
Heartening, and energizing. Makes you want to live adventurously. But just not that adventurously. ;D
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,373,658 times
Reputation: 40731
Reading Yogi, a biography of Yogi Berra by John Pessah, interesting not only because of Berra and the outstanding career he had as well as what a decent man he was, but also for a peek at just how big baseball was back in the day, especially prior to TV taking hold when baseball was a huge supplier of entertainment for many people both at the ballpark and on the radio.
[quote=pinetreelover;65325893]I'm finally ready to share my review of The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. This is a mammoth story (and mammoth book - 724 pages) that begins in 1900 with the marriage of a 12 year old girl to an older widower in India and though this might sound ominous their relationship matures into a loving legacy and most of the characters throughout the decades that follow are somehow connected to this family and certainly to the land that is so beautifully described:
Thank you for posting your review! I am looking forward to reading this mammoth of a book
Also, thank you for contributing to the What Did You Look Up thread!
This one felt like a bit of a bear to read at times. This was a 3.5 star read for me.
"In the third week after Alissa's disappearance Roland set about imposing order on the overstuffed bookshelves around the table just off the kitchen. Books are difficult to tidy. Hard to chuck out. They resist. He set aside a cardboard box for charity-shop rejects. After an hour it contained two out-of-date paperback travel guides. Some editions had slips of paper or letters inside that needed to be read before they were returned to the shelves. Others had fond dedications. Many were too familiar to be handled without being opened and tasted again--on the first page or at random. A handful were modern first editions that asked to be opened and admired. He was not a collector--these were presents or accidental purchases."
"He was able to tell her he was no longer a burden on the state. What he couldn't confess to anyone was his lightness of being. To have money! Why had no one told him, it was a physical thing? He felt it in his arms and legs. Especially in his neck and shoulders. Mortgage paid off, son brightly clothed, two weeks together on an overlooked Greek island reached by a three-hour speedboat dash across a flat cerulean sea."
I've just started my current book club read, "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus. I'm enjoying it very much -- clever, quirky, humorous -- what's not to love?!
The publisher's blurb in Amazon:
Meet Elizabeth Zott: a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show.
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