A family saga set in 20th-century Kerala and Madras, India
I try to discuss books without giving away spoilers because, for me, they deflate some of the magic. I don’t even read the back matter and certainly not reviews before reading a novel. I want the story to unfold exactly the way the author planned it. As a writer, I work hard to reveal each facet at just the right moment, so as a reader, I only want to know the genre, time, and place when I start at the opening line.
With those caveats, I’ll start with what you really want to know: Yes, I would recommend this novel. Absolutely, yes. As historical fiction, it succeeds in captivating, horizon-expanding, question-raising storytelling.
But brace yourself. Verghese pulls no punches. He spares his characters nothing, and as in real life, there is rarely any warning.
Not only is his storytelling an emotional whipsaw, but Verghese is a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and brings all of his medical acumen to the page.
It took me a while to read this novel, not because it is 700+ pages long. I had to set it aside for days at a time to recover my courage to go on.
But the horrors bind together the complex plot and are embedded in the deep points of view of well-crafted characters.
This 20th-century story is set among the St. Thomas Christians of Kerala who trace their conversion to the AD 52 journey of Thomas the Apostle to India. This context alone is enough to get my attention. I’ve long been aware of these St. Thomas Christians, Christian history being a particular interest, but I knew little about them. And since exploring new cultures is the major draw of historical fiction for me, I am a fitting audience for The Covenant of Water.
Beginning in 1900, Verghese follows three generations of one family against the background of world wars, independence, and communist uprisings. Verghese keeps most of this larger context at bay, instead focusing on the personal trials of the individuals.
I was relieved when the atrocities of The Partition were glossed over. Apparently, that human experiment, costing one million lives, took place at a distance from Kerala. That’s not to minimize the importance of those events, but the ordeals in Verghese’s characters’ lives were exhausting enough for one book.
What held me through the trauma was his compassionate construction of his characters—and there are a LOT of them. We see the inner workings of their thoughts, rationalizations, fears, beliefs, and sometimes flawed decision processes. Even minor players appear deeply layered with the impression of full histories outside the bounds of this story.
There were times I doubted Verghese could bring all the disparate plotlines together, but I persevered in the trust that he would do so because of his strong debut, Cutting for Stone, and the generally enthusiastic reception of Covenant. And, of course, he did just that—skillfully converging the paths of three generations through the eighty-year saga.
Faith in The Covenant of Water.
I’ll make just a few observations, as it could be its own study. After roughing in my thoughts for this article, I searched out some reviews to post at the end and noticed many mention the theme of “faith”, but none discuss it further. “Faith” gets a cursory, even canned reference, and no more in these articles. And yet the salvation imagery of water—the death, the burial, and resurrection pictured in baptism—are all here and not subtle. References to cleansing, new life, water’s changeless and ever-changing nature, and its power to move landscapes—the literal and figurative—abound in the text.
In 1900, the future matriarch, Big Ammachi, is a child bride who leans on a settled faith to navigate her new husband and responsibilities. She retains a rooted Christian belief and allegiance through the many decades of her life, through all her family’s troubles. Until her death, whether in the foreground or background of the unfolding plot, Big Ammachi is a pillar of character and prayer. When she sees her own flaws, she asks God’s forgiveness. When she suffers, she turns toward her God, although, like Job, she would appreciate it if God would pay a little less attention to her family.
As time moves forward, the second and third generations embody modernity and the accompanying technological sophistication and social changes that come with it. These generations gradually discount their faith. When they suffer, they move toward doubt. In the end, they find a tenuous peace and resignation in their own self-atoning sacrificial acts of love.
This is where I stumble. Does modern life and our increased scientific worldview negate the need for faith? Has Progress solved any of these characters’ real problems of behavior or choices? Is the rejection of the spiritual, the Other, necessarily universal and inevitable in the age of science and medicine, or is the result a greater despair when science and medicine still fail?
In Vergheses’s story, one medical issue is solved but another is not. And for these characters specifically, the writer is certainly aware of the irony that their magnanimous actions model God’s redeeming sacrifice. Is sacrificial love now only to be found in human behavior?
Despite their scars, Verghese’s characters are made righteous by their savior-less atonement. They experience absolution by the writer. It’s beautiful but a bit rose-colored. Through their personal refining fires, everyone is self-redeeming in the end. It’s all a bit joyless in its humanistic dead end.
I would argue that it is not inevitable that modernity must exclude faith. If anything, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have displayed more reason to look to the Model of sacrificial and redeeming love for answers. Otherwise, we are left with an untrustworthy humanism at the expense of the sacred.
This post originally appeared in my newsletter: Long Ago & Far Away