Scarlet Writes

  I recently finished reading two of Abraham Verghese’s books and something in me has shifted. It took me days to come out of the universe that Verghese so meticulously creates in these books. The stories are not connected. The characters, settings and timeline are entirely different, but the way Verghese writes, connects you to the soul of each story. ‘The Covenant of Water’ spans three generations starting with the marriage of a twelve-year-old girl with a forty-year-old man in the early 1900s. Set along the shores of the Indian ocean, the novel follows a cast of unforgettable characters, each carrying a story to tell, a heartbreaking story of love and loss and separation and fleeting moments of light and love. And in all that these characters live through; water becomes a thread binding them together. Towards the end, comes a revelation so devastating that it makes you want to close the book, sit and stare into nothingness as your heart dem ands time to recover from what has jus...