 |
| always happy with a poster :) |
 |
| MasterPieces truly does have the very best posters of any company out there! |
This was another beautiful story. It was so much different from The Covenant of Water that at first I think I had to get used to the storyline. It all grew on me, though. The depiction of the sisters and their deep bonds, the love Charlie had for his daughters (and they for him) and the way Izzy and the others welcomed Alice in immediately, as if they had known each other for years... those bonds touched me. As did the scenes with William surrounded by his tall, quiet friends... flanking his side as they walked to the super duplex on the worst day of his life. And showing up at the basketball court - just to sit beside him. I felt the weight of each of these relationships... including the broken ones. Having gone through fractures in some of my own important relationships I could feel the despair and heartache, and also the anger and confusion the author wrote about so well.
This book was all about relationships - those that work and feed us and help us be who we are. And those that break and do damage and leave scars. Sometimes we experience full healing and sometimes we don’t.
I liked this book because it felt quite ‘real’. It depicted a large family with warts and all... loving, supportive, ‘there for you’, but those same people can also be critical and disappointing. The relationship between the 4 girls was very believable. And you felt their love and concern for one another - an ‘us against the world’ mentality at times. The friction that occurred in their relationships also felt real, though... and well written.
I remember Mama saying when she attended her first family reunion with my Daddy that she thought to herself, ‘Are these people for real??’ They were all laughing and talking and clearly enjoying one another’s company and she had never experienced anything like that before in her life. Her family was not this way at all. She realized that indeed they WERE like that! It was very real. And again, that didn’t mean it was all roses, but you knew that this group of folks would have your back when it came down to it - no matter how annoyed you might be with one another at any given time. The scenes at the end where Alice finds herself in a room surrounded by so much ‘love and grief’ that it was all palpable reminded me of my Mama’s stories. And felt so real.
I also loved the depiction of male friendship in this book. That is something that doesn’t often make its way to the pages of a book... or really anywhere. Even in ‘real life’ male friendships can be harder to find and define and yet they are so powerful (when done well). There were several scenes where Kent would alert other members of the team that William needed their support and they would simply ‘show up’. Either at a basketball court to quietly sit with him or when he needed support in the hardest of situations... they would arrive. Another scene near the end that touched me was when Kent and William were walking along the sidewalk heading to the ‘super-duplex’ and suddenly 2 more guys appear and step in alongside them. Then shortly after that Aresh climbs out of a car along their route and joins in with all. They were surrounding William with love and support - literally and figuratively. And it was a powerful moment that made me tear up. I know friendship for men can just be harder to attain than it seems to for women. This book showed the power of male friendship and also ‘how’ to do it well.
I rated this book 4.5 stars. Reading Circle rated it 3.9.
What a beautiful and marvelous book. A true epic story spanning three generations of people whose lives intersect (in large and small ways) in India, specifically in the Kerala on the south Malabar coast. Side note, this book definitely makes me want to travel to this region. I feel that I could smell, see, taste, and hear the richness and beauty of this area and culture and people. Abraham Verghese has a way of writing that is so descriptive and so evocative that you feel you ARE smelling, seeing, tasting and hearing everything. I was so invested in the lives of the characters, particularly Big Ammachi, who we first meet as a young girl about to enter an arranged marriage with an older man - and also Digby Kilgour, a young doctor from Scotland who travels to India and makes his life there.
The author is himself a physician and he writes, in great detail at times, about medical conditions and treatments. One mystery that carries throughout the book is ‘the Condition’, a mysterious ailment that often results in drowning and is passed down through generations within families. I also learned a great deal about leprosy, something that I think we are all ‘familiar’ with but then realize we actually know nothing about it. While this may sound like it would make for dry reading, it is anything but. The way the author draws us into the drama and drudgery and hardship and calling of medicine - for providers and patients, is amazing. He weaves a story that shifts from one character to another, allowing us to get close to them before diverting to another character more in-depth. At first I wanted him to continue with the storyline we were on... but as he wove the tale, I began to realize there were so many layers of connections between all the characters. I appreciated even more deeply how it all came together into one epic story in this special region of the world.
I am now seeing that the audiobook is narrated by the author himself. I am seriously thinking I want to now listen to this book - just to hear his narration. Yes, it is a VERY long book at 775 pages, but I loved it so much. I know I would get something new from the audio version if I were to listen to it.
Also, I found that Oprah has a 6 part podcast with Abraham Verghese discussing this book in detail. I am just now starting to watch it and am loving it. Below is the first of six episodes of the podcast and they are well worth the viewing.
From this podcast - about 18 minutes in on this first episode... talking about difference between being cured and healed. That there are two aspects to illness... there is a spiritual or soul aspect and also the actual medical event (injury, disease). To truly be a healing physician, there must be more than just the modern medicine ‘cure’... but a sense of addressing and ‘healing’ the woundedness. He talks about his experience with Aids patients in the 80’s... that “one could be healed without being cured”.
And below are (many) lines from the book that I highlighted as I read...
Travel broadens the mind and loosens the bowels.
All water is connected and only land and people are discontinuous.
So interesting to me that this book looks at Caste and again clarifies that it is not just in India... but throughout the world. (Digby is in a lower caste in Scotland due to being Catholic).
You’re the victim of a caste system. We’ve been doing the same thing to each other in India for centuries. The inalienable rights of the Brahmins. And the absence of any rights for the untouchables. And all the layers in between. Everyone who is looked down on can look down on someone else. Except the lowest. The British just came along and moved us down a rung.
Secrecy lives in the same rooms as loneliness.
The thumb alone would prove the existence of God. A working hand is a miracle.
Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives.
Medicine is his true priesthood, a ministry of healing the body and the soul of his flock.
Literacy alters patterns of life that have gone undisturbed for generations.
Life is like this. Crushing is there, and success is there. Never only success.
How many insights vanished in the ether because they weren’t written down.
We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.
It comes to her that it’s only when one’s father and mother are both dead that one stops being a child, being a daughter. She has just become an adult.
You can confide in quiet people. They make way for one’s thoughts.
There’s nothing emptier than a hospital bed to which a loved one might not return.
This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapedly by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone. She stays there listening to the burbling mantra, the chant that never ceases, repeating its message that all is one.
Every family has secrets, but not all secrets are meant to deceive.
What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share. Secrets that can bind them together or bring them to their knees when revealed.
Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful.
