The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

 

About

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone. Published in 2009, Cutting for Stone became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Character List

Parambil

Big Ammachi, the twelve-year-old bride, who in time becomes the matriarch of the family and is named “Big” Ammachi by Jojo

Big Appachen, the widower, father of JoJo, who marries Big Ammachi

Thankamma, older sister of Big Appachen

JoJo, son of Big Appachen, born to his first wife, and stepson of Big Ammachi

Baby Mol, Big Ammachi’s first-born, a daughter

Philipose, Big Ammachi’s son

Shamuel, a member of the pulayar caste, whose family has worked for the Parambil family for generations. He is the most senior of the other pulayar.

Sara, Shamuel’s wife

Joppan, Shamuel’s son and classmate of Philipose

Ammini, Joppan’s wife

Damodaran (Damo), an elephant nursed back to health by Big Appachen

The Kaniyan, teacher and astrologer belonging to the kaniya caste

Georgie, Big Appachen’s nephew. He and Ranjan are the identical twin sons of Big Appachen’s oldest brother who cheated Big Appachen out of his inheritance

Dolly Kochamma, Georgie’s wife

Ranjan, Big Appachen’s nephew, twin of Georgie

Decency Kochamma, Ranjan’s wife

Odat Kochamma, a widowed lady who comes to stay with the family. She is Big Appachen’s distant cousin.

Mar Gregorios, born in 1848, a deceased bishop and first saint of the St. Thomas Christians in Kerala. His tomb in the Parumala Church draws worshippers from all over

Koshy Saar, a retired lecturer in English, who introduces Philipose to Moby-Dick and other novels

Broker Aniyan, a marriage matchmaker

Uplift Master, a clerk in Madras who returns to Parambil when his wife inherits her brother’s property

Shoshamma, Uplift Master’s wife and heir to her brother’s land in Parambil after he dies unexpectedly

“Manager” Kora, his father was a distant cousin of Big Appachen and he was given the title of “Manager” by the Maharajah. When Kora’s father was financially ruined by his son’s business failings, Big Appachen gifted the father land at Parambil. On the father’s death his son moved to Parambil to take over the land as “Manager”. He is the husband of Lizziamma (Lizzi) and father of Lenin Evermore.

Lizziamma (Lizzi), an orphaned girl, convent educated, who marries “Manager” Kora. She is Lenin’s mother, and a favorite of Big Ammachi

Lenin Evermore, Lizzi’s son

Baby Ninan, Elsie’s son

Anna Chedethi, a woman who comes to Parambil to help Big Ammachi and stays, becoming Mariamma’s wet nurse and later managing the Parambil kitchen and household

Hannah, Anna Chedethi’s daughter, deeply religious, she becomes a nun

Mariamma, Big Ammachi’s granddaughter

Podi, Joppan’s daughter

Cherian, owner of Cherian’s Tea Shop, located outside the Triple Yem Hospital

Right Reverend Rory McGillicutty of Corpus Christi, Texas. A guest speaker at the Maramon Convention

Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

 

Reimagining ordinary words for a deeper sense of belonging

The inspiration for Consolations was born in 2010 with an invitation from The Observer to write a short essay on regret. The limit for the piece was 300 words - barely enough, David exclaimed, for an Irishman to catch his breath. But he took up the challenge and met it with the full power of the poetic imagination, writing of regret’s haunting ability to make us appreciate just how high the stakes are in any human life, describing regret as “an elegy to lost possibilities, even in its brief annunciation.”

Over the next few years, David turned a poet’s eye for evocative imagery and a philosopher’s reflection on meaning and context toward 52 ordinary words - coincidentally and somehow appropriately, a deck of cards. Beginning with Alone, and concluding with Withdrawal, the collection inspires and nourishes, offering the deepest consolation a human being can experience - a profound sense of belonging and connection to the world.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

 

A Skillfully Composed Space Opera In 'Ancillary Justice'

October 8, 20137:00 AM ET

By 

Genevieve Valentine

Ancillary Justice

by Ann Leckie

Paperback, 409 pages

purchase

"My heart is a fish, hiding in the water-grass."

Breq has found someone in the snow: a stranger to everyone on this planet, a thousand years old, a relic out of time — but despite all that, Breq remembers.

Breq used to be the ship that carried them both.

The assured, gripping and stylish Ancillary Justice is, in its broadest strokes, the tale of an empire, and in its smallest a character study, and part of debut novelist Anne Leckie's achievement is how she handles her protagonists in both of those contexts.

Justice of Toren is a living ship far beyond AI, spending millennia carrying officers and troops for the Radchaai Empire's endless planetary annexations. Those troops are ancillaries — sometimes called corpse soldiers — reanimated bodies that now share a single consciousness and act as one. Breq was once the ancillary One Esk and the ship Justice of Toren. But now, separated in a moment of trauma, she's autonomous. It's a condition so rare no one suspects what she is.

It's an advantage: She's out to kill the Lord of the Radch, and her only hope is that no one remembers her.

Though framed like '70s grindhouse — there was a setup, and someone's out to clean the slate — things unfold studiously, reminiscent of the deliberation underscoring Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. (Several chapters take place during negotiations over a single gun.) Each character adds texture to the picture that slowly emerges: Skaaiat, cynical noble caught in political wheels; many-bodied dictator Anaander Minaai, Lord of the Radch; Awn, One Esk's last commander; and Seivarden, the dissolute exile she rescues, who joins her suicide mission.

Ancillary Justice is Ann Leckie's first novel.

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The story moves in and out of perspectives and time periods, from the millennia-long view of Justice of Toren to the solitary Breq, looping this space opera from long history back to the immediately personal and highlighting Breq's double motives: Toren wants to disrupt a cycle of corruption; One Esk is out to revenge a friend.

It won't be easy. The universe of Ancillary Justice is complex, murky and difficult to navigate — no bad thing, as Leckie's deft sketches hint at worlds beyond, none of them neat. Most obvious are the linguistic disconnects: Breq's home tongue uses only "she," reinforcing her otherness as she constantly guesses at genders in other languages.

Then there are disconnects of culture when she returns to the heart of the Empire and contends with loaded expectations of dress and behavior. There are cruelties and power differentials between colonizers and colonized that make easy resolution impossible. And cleverly, personal disconnects that are never directly stated — because despite knowing thousands of protocols designed to smooth social interaction, Breq herself doesn't yet recognize her own emotional reactions.

Instead, her inner life thaws slowly, making for a protagonist who's sometimes oblique but never opaque; her fondness for singing is considered a quirk of programming, but there's a reason she thinks so often about a children's song of hidden hearts.

A space opera that skillfully handles both choruses and arias, Ancillary Justice is an absorbing thousand-year history, a poignant personal journey, and a welcome addition to the genre.

Genevieve Valentine is the author of Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti.

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