Verghese's long-awaited second novel is impossible not to love

 

Abraham Verghese’s new novel, “The Covenant of Water,” is epic and engrossing. This is the book that fans of “Cutting for Stone” have been waiting 14 years for.

Like “Cutting for Stone,” religion, history, disease, and doctors are prominent in “Covenant.” However, the new novel is much more expansive, following three generations of a family across nearly a century and bringing in secondary plots that converge with the main story.

The book opens in 1900 in southwest India on the Malabar Coast among a religious minority known as St. Thomas Christians. Mariamma, age 12, is to be married to a 40-year-old widower whom she has never met. She travels hours from her home to be wed to him. She is scared and homesick. Her new sister-in-law stays with the new couple and teaches her to cook and care for her stepson, Jojo.

Both Jojo and his father have a strange aversion to water. After Jojo drowns in a few inches of water in a ditch, Mariamma’s husband confides his family’s secret. In every generation at least one person dies by drowning. Grief-stricken, Mariamma begs God that if He can’t cure the affliction, at least send someone who can.

Mariamma, now called Big Ammachi (mother), has two of her own children, a daughter who is born with what was then called “cretinism,” and a son, Philipose, who has the same “condition” as his father. The story follows the family through Philipose’s generation and that of his daughter, who becomes a gifted physician.

Two characters whose lives intersect with Big Ammachi’s family are also doctors. A Swede in Cochin, who has a religious revelation, converts an abandoned lazaretto into a leprosarium to treat the region’s many lepers. Another is a Scottish transplant, Digby, who first practices in Madras and later meets and joins the Swedish doctor at the leprosarium. The author’s unflinching detail of the diseases and their treatments is both fascinating and, at times, repulsive.

Despite hardship and grief, Big Ammachi’s faith never waivers. Her water covenant with God remains strong throughout her life, in spite of water being the source of much of her grief. Big Ammachi witnesses social upheaval—the end of the British Raj, the secularization of Indian society— and technological changes of the twentieth century that alter her world in ways she never imagined as a child.

“The Covenant of Water” is the story of a family’s resilience and devotion to God and each other. It is a sweeping narrative that incorporates science, superstition, and magic. It reveals the power of both faith and science. It is a masterpiece of love, grief, and triumph. Verghese’s lyrical style and endearing characters make this novel impossible not to love.

Suspense, action fill genre-buster

In the opening line, author Victor LaValle writes that “there are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.” Ironically, the heroine of his newest novel, “Lone Women,” attempts to escape her shame.

Adelaide Henry flees her family’s California farm in 1915 after setting fire to the house with her parents’ corpses inside. She takes with her an impossibly heavy steamer trunk that she does not like to let out of her sight.

She heads to Montana, one of the few states that allow lone women to homestead. What she finds there is an unforgiving climate, seemingly friendly neighbors—until Adelaide angers them—and only one other Black person for hundreds of miles.

Adelaide is almost completely unprepared to survive the winter and has to rely on some of those neighbors. In addition, a widow and her four sons make an unwelcome visit to her cabin, where Adelaide has just discovered her steamer trunk open and empty. That’s when people start to die.

LaValle’s genre-busting novel is equal parts western, historical, mystery, and horror. There is plenty of action and blood, but there is plenty to think about also. Adelaide contends with loneliness, isolation, allowing herself to trust others, and of course, “her shame.”

Despite some bothersome plot holes and a decidedly weird climax, “Lone Women” will entertain readers with a well-told story, complex and interesting characters, and page-turning suspense.

Loneliness pervades tale of gruesome murder

After living with a pandemic for nearly three years, and almost two years after the first vaccines arrived, most people have returned to normal life, even if it is a different normal than before covid. I don’t worry about going to stores or restaurants unmasked, I hug people I love, and we enjoy large family dinners. However, the worry is always in the back of my mind, manifesting as anxiety in very crowded spaces. It is not difficult to recall the loneliness—for some, isolation—that the pandemic brought.

Katrine Engberg’s new installment of her Korner and Werner series, “The Sanctuary,” written during covid, deftly captures the pain of loneliness, not from pandemic lockdown, but from the usual trials of life.

After Copenhagen police find a suitcase with half of a body in it—the left half—detective Anette Werner travels to the tiny Danish island of Bornholm following clues to try to determine the victim’s identity and find his killer. While working on the case, she has to contend with missing her husband and toddler daughter, and her three troublesome border collies.

Anette’s partner, Jeppe Korner, has been on a leave of absence for months after a painful breakup. He’s on Bornholm working as a lumberjack, living alone, and socializing only with his shut-in neighbor. Since he’s already on Bornholm and acquainted with many locals, Anette asks Jeppe to find out what he can as she sets up her investigation out of the local police station. This is Anette’s first time to head up a homicide investigation on her own, and she is both anxious and missing her partner.

Jeppe’s friend Esther also arrives on Bornholm, grieving the recent death of her roommate, Gregers. She’s there working on a biography of a famous anthropologist—Margrethe Dybris—now deceased. She was invited to stay in the woman’s home by the woman’s daughter, who is also staying there. Meanwhile, Anette learns that the suitcases that the two half-corpses (the second one being found a few days after the first) once belonged to the famed scientist. Anette and her team begin to suspect that the scientist’s missing son is the victim.

The story alternates between the present investigation and Dybris’s life, which we learn about through Esther reading her correspondence. Dybris eschewed marriage, electing to adopt two children, live modestly, and pursue her work. While her daughter attended college, married, had a career, her son struggled in school and got into trouble—pranks and mischief mostly. However, at his eighteenth birthday party, his pregnant girlfriend died from a mysterious fall. Suspicion fell on the son, and his life began to spin out of control, leading to drugs and petty crime.

The plot is intriguing as Anette and her team meticulously and methodical investigate the gruesome murder. There are plenty of suspects, and readers are treated to some action and suspense at the climax.

I am very much a fan of Nordic Noir, which can be quite dark and somewhat disturbing—even disturbed. Readers who may not be comfortable with the gloomy, unsettling stories in most of the genre will enjoy this series. Despite their loneliness, grief, and pain, the characters find connection or reconnection with others by the end of the book—happy endings for all but the killer.

How, not who, is question in tense thriller

Ana Reyes’s debut novel, “The House in the Pines” is a tense thriller that keeps the reader turning pages and trying, as the protagonist does, to figure out just what happened.

Twenty-something Maya, trying to kick her addiction to tranquilizers, sees a Youtube video of a woman seeming to drop dead while sitting in a diner. Maya recognizes the man with the young woman as Frank, whom she had known seven years ago when Maya’s friend Aubrey also dropped dead in Frank’s presence. Convinced that this second death is no coincidence, Maya returns to her home town to try and find out what happened and prove that Frank is responsible for both deaths.

The story is told in two chronologies. The present chronology of Maya’s attempt to regain lost memories, fight her addiction, and prove Frank a killer is told in the past tense, so that readers share Maya’s guarded, emotional distance from the frightening events of finding the video and hunting a killer.

The second chronology, the summer after Maya finishes high school, plans for college, and meets Frank, is told in the present tense, drawing the reader into Maya’s fragmented memories and the tragedy of Aubrey’s death and Maya’s inability to escape or move on from that summer.

Readers, and Maya, know all along who the killer is. Since the only question is how he did it, there is little suspense until the end when Maya gets close to the truth. However, the book’s interesting structure keep the reader’s attention. It’s a rewarding read that moves quickly, especially good for a day locked in the house by bad weather.

Marburg’s lonely, desperate characters struggle to find human connection

Louise Marburg’s new short story collection presents snapshots of twelve women at difficult and painful turning points. Written during the pandemic lock-down, “You Have Reached Your Destination,” due out Nov. 10, exudes the anxiety, fear, and sometimes despair that many were feeling at that time.

The youngest of these women is just 12 years old and struggling to understand and accept her father’s suicide while tiptoeing around her alcoholic and abusive mother. Her one ally, her sister, who is 10 years older, inexplicably turns on her, adhering instead to an alcoholic and abusive boyfriend. Not even a teenager yet, Katie realizes she is utterly alone, with only herself to trust and depend on.

At 91, June is the oldest of Marburg’s protagonists. June lives alone in New York City, “an easy place to be old.” She can take a taxi wherever she wants to go and have her groceries delivered, and she has a best friend in her building. However, June’s friend dies suddenly while having tea with her.

When newlyweds move in next door, she is happy to find the young wife is friendly and even offers to pick up items for June on her shopping trip. It is not long before June hears loud noises coming from her new neighbors’ apartment: loud voices, thumps, and crashes. The next day she sees the young wife with a bruise on her face. June, having escaped an abusive first husband, tries to help her neighbor, but the woman becomes angry. June confides in her daughter, who never knew about her mother’s first marriage. The daughter doesn’t believe her and implies that June is becoming senile. June misses her best friend and feels abandoned by her daughter.

The other ten stories feature young women desperate for family, middle aged women desperate for love, and older women desperate to be seen. Many are orphaned or come from abusive homes. One is so ashamed of her parents, she tells everyone they are dead.

Marburg’s stories of loneliness are not without humor and hope. Matronly, 60-something Lydia finds an obscene and threatening note on her desk. Her patronizing boss promises to find out who left it although he never intends to do anything about it at all. Then Lydia’s duplicitous and self-involved best friend accuses Lydia of leaving it herself for attention. To console herself, Lydia takes an all-afternoon lunch at a downtown bar, not realizing it is a gay bar, even after meeting a woman named Dade who actually turns out to be David.

In “Next of Kin,” a 41-year-old freelancer who has been “actively wooing” a rare-book dealer “despite his obvious lack of interest” finally makes her move on him only to discover that he’s gay. Neither of them can understand how she missed this. Although they don’t make love, they do become close friends, and he promises to be her next-of-kin.

Marburg’s protagonists are searching for human connection, something that was painfully missing for many people during 2020. They are looking for friends, allies, lovers, or children. They are realistically drawn characters struggling with their very human needs in a cold and chaotic world. This fourth collection of shorts stories cements Marburg’s place as an important and compelling voice in contemporary literature as she captures American angst and loneliness as few have done since Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

Magickal mystery arrives in time for Halloween

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, with a heavy dose of magical realism, “River Woman, River Demon” by Jennifer Givhan is an entertaining page-turner ahead of Halloween.

Eva, Chicana/indigenous artist and mother of two, lives on a dusty ranch near Albuquerque with her college professor/magickian husband, Jericho. Eva is also a practitioner of brujería and curanderisma.

Just a couple of weeks before Halloween, or Hallows as Eva and Jericho call it, Eva is drowsing at her kitchen table when she awakens to a woman’s screams coming from the direction of the river. She runs barefoot across the scrubby grasses, cactus, and rocks to find Jericho in the water with their friend Cecilia. Cecilia is beaten bloody and drowned.

Cecilia’s blood is found both in her car and Jericho’s, and the police find intimate photos of Cecilia in the glovebox of Jericho’s car. Eva, still traumatized by the drowning death of her best childhood friend, Karma, is now re-traumatized by both Cecilia’s murder and her husband’s betrayal.

Where before she was haunted just by Karma’s memory and her fragmented recollections of her death, Eva is now also haunted by Cecilia, sometimes in the form of an owl. And someone—or something—is cursing her with unexplained bruises, statues running blood, fainting, and paralysis.

Then suddenly, people from Eva’s past begin appearing. First the boyfriend that abandoned her in San Diego shows up at Cecilia’s funeral. He and Eva rekindle their relationship. Then the girl, now woman, that had accused Eva of drowning Karma arrives at Eva’s house offering to help her. Although Karma’s death was eventually ruled an accident, Eva had come under suspicion because of the girl’s accusations.

Not knowing who she can trust, Eva has to rely on herself and her magick to make sense of the tragic events of her life and keep herself and her children from danger.

Although Cecilia’s murder and the climax of the story are the only parts of intense action, the author uses short chapters to keep the story from dragging, even the passages that are just Eva dreaming or talking with her sister.

Eva’s memory gaps and fainting spells make her a somewhat unreliable narrator, suggesting to the reader, and to Eva herself, that perhaps she is responsible for the deaths of her two friends. The suspense builds even further at the end when the reader realizes before Eva who the killer is.

“River Woman, River Demon” releases Oct. 4, just in time for Hallows. It is a fun, quick read that will entertain and intrigue.

Imagery and mystery make debut novel enjoyable read

Virginia Hartman’s debut novel, “The Marsh Queen” is a treasure trove of birds, swamps, moss, and herbs. Add to that family secrets, stalkers, and murderous bad guys and the result is an interesting read.

Smithsonian bird artist Loni Murrow returns to her Florida pan-handle hometown after her mother suffers a fall and starts displaying signs of dementia. Her relationship with her mother has always been tense. In addition, returning home dredges up painful memories of Loni’s father’s suicide when Loni was 12 years old.

Officially recorded as an accident, Loni keeps the facts of her father’s death from her brother, who was an infant when Boyd died. But as she is going through her mother’s things, she finds a cryptic note from Henrietta saying it’s time that they talk about what really happened to Boyd. Loni begins searching for this Henrietta, whom everyone in town denies knowing.

As Loni spends week after week in Florida, she takes long canoe trips through the swamp looking for models for her free-lance work. Hartman’s precise and beautiful detail put the reader in the quiet swamp, the only sounds the oar’s dip in the water and the occasional bird calling its mate.

Although the mystery of Henrietta and her note drive the plot, the narrative does drag a bit. At least 100 pages could have been cut from the book’s 384. After the third canoe trip through the swamp, we have the idea. And Loni has lots of breakfasts and lunches with her brother where she learns a little bit more to aid her search for the truth about her dad. Several of these conversations could have been combined.

However, readers looking for beautiful prose, well-drawn characters, and intriguing mystery will enjoy “The Marsh Queen.”