Covenant of Water

This was a chonker of a book that I feel really didn't need to be so big. I appreciate that Verghese was giving detailed background to the characters, but when you're 3/4 of the way through the massive book and wondering how everything comes together still, it's a little much.

I was glad to get an actual explanation behind the water curse that wasn't just some mystical occurrence. It was nice to have the reference of science helping to explain mysterious happenings that we hadn't previously been able to understand.

Overall, I would say the storyline was at least enjoyable enough, but I won't ever feel compelled to revisit this one in the future.

It's a long book (715 pages) that tells of the saga of many characters in India from the beginning of the century to the 60's. English (as opposed to most latin languages) is difficult to turn into something beautiful but Verghese somehow achieves this in his writing. The problem is that he takes on too many characters and it's not long before you get a little lost and as a result it becomes difficult to root for one character in particular. He also uses a lot of native language sentences and words which certainly doesn't help. But a nice book nevertheless.
Apparently another book of his is much better: Cutting from Stone and I'm planning to have t look.