Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

After reading Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, there was never any doubt that I'd read whatever Verghese wrote in the future. The compelling novel, The Covenant of Water, while slightly daunting in size, is an engrossing, transportative epic spanning three generations and seven decades Kerala, India and serves to cement Verghese as one of our most talented writers working today.

A twelve year girl grieving the death of father and a forty year old widower with a young son, both Malayali Christians, marry as the novel opens in 1900. This marriage establishes the family that we follow throughout the next 77 years. The girl, eventually known as Big Ammachi, lives a life filled with sorrow and tragedy (the family she's married into appears cursed, at least one member dying by drowning in each generation) but also one of expansive love. In parallel to the story of Big Ammachi and her family, is the story of a Scottish doctor named Digby Kilgour who comes to British India to work for the Indian Medical Service. How the two seemingly disparate plot lines come together is quite intricate and well done.

Because of the long time frame of the novel, Verghese has the chance to see his characters through enormous changes politically and socially, from the British Raj to an India that stands on its own. Some of these historical events have larger impacts on Big Ammachi's family than others do but all are woven seamlessly into the domestic story at the heart of the novel. The scope of the story is both broad and narrow, resulting in a colorful and diverse tapestry of a novel. There are some side plots that are more interesting than others (likely fully dependent on the reader) and some are more well developed than others but each has certainly earned its place in this wide-ranging, personal novel. Readers looking for an immersive experience filled with love and grief, tradition and novelty, colonialism and self-determination, and all of the history and variety that has forever characterized India will thrill to this impressive reading experience.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

Interpretations of Love by
Jane Campbell.
The book is being released by Grove Press on August 20, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: During the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's daughter's wedding, each of the eleven attendees in the small family gathering brings their own simmering tensions. Agnes's uncle, Professor Malcolm Miller, has harbored a family secret since Agnes's parents died in a car crash when she was a young girl. Dr. Joseph Bradshaw, who married into the family, has nursed a private obsession with Agnes since his brief stint as her therapist. Agnes herself is returning to her ex-husband's home for the first time, just as she's trying to extricate herself from a potent new love affair. Each one of these three has the tools to analyze the love lives of others, yet find themselves challenged to recognize the love in their own lives. As they all emerge from painful years in emotional isolation, Malcolm considers where better to lay bare the failures and secrets of one's advancing age than at an intimate celebration of love?

In this incisive and lively novel, Campbell parses the inner lives of ordinary people doing their best to process aftershocks of war, the parenting they do and don't receive, and the many different forms love can take in one family.

Review: The Life O'Reilly by Brian Cohen

When someone has the "life of Riley," they are said to have a comfortable, stress-free, and completely enjoyable life. It's not a stretch to be jealous of someone like that. Then again, how does one actually know that their life is so enviable behind the scenes? Brian Cohen's novel, The Life O'Reilly, shows that things are not always as they seem and that we should grab onto the only life we've been given while we still can.

Nick O'Reilly works for a high-powered Wall Street law firm and is very good at his job. He might have to defend crooks and liars but that's given him a Central Park apartment and the financial security that his parents never had. The only thing missing is a personal life. When his law firm gets some bad press, they elect him to do some pro bono work to rehabilitate their image. In representing Dawn Nelson, a victim of domestic violence fighting for sole custody of her young son, Nick gets a different view of life from the one he's been living and he starts to reevaluate what he wants in his own life and future. But the course of life does not always go smoothly.

The novel is told in the first person by Nick, making it rather odd when he describes his own expressions and actions: "I offered not a word, but a close-mouthed smile" and "I sighed heavily with agitation..." The writing is distractingly and overly descriptive and the language choices are often off, such as when describing a beautiful bride as having a "florid complexion." The story line is fine, a little predictable, but fine. All of the conflicts in the story are pretty easily dispensed with and the nuance of real life is missing. Cohen saves his elaboration for the set dressing (rooms, character descriptions, etc.) instead of for the pieces that move the plot forward, a technique better suited to movie or tv writing than in a novel. This, and the odd language, coupled with insta-love and what felt like an unearned, emotionally manipulative ending meant this book did not really work for me.

Review: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

If you haven't been living under a rock the past few years, and you have any connection to or interest in the publishing world, you will have watched a major controversy erupt over the question of identity, who is allowed to write which stories, and the marginalizing of writers of color. R. F. Kuang's complex and well-written novel Yellowface examines authors, publishing, and these very timely controversies.

June Hayward is a struggling writer. She went to Yale with current literary darling Athena Liu, with whom she's always had a complicated relationship. Are they friends or enemies? Whatever they are, June is with Athena at her apartment when Athena dies in an accident. And then June, whether in shock or in a calculated move, steals the only extant copy of Athena's recently finished manuscript about the neglected contributions of Chinese labourers on the WWI front, rationalizing that she will edit the rough manuscript to make it publishable. Only she rewrites so much in the editing process that she ultimately submits the manuscript to her agent as her own work. The book, which goes on to be a runaway bestseller, is published under the name Juniper Song (which is actually June's name: Juniper Song Hayward) with a racially ambiguous author photo. June is not, however, of Chinese descent, which raises the question of who gets to tell certain stories and highlights the lie of marketing. As the furor over June's identity escalates, she is also working hard to conceal the fact that the novel itself was Athena's and that she stole it.

June narrates the novel, making bad choice after bad choice, arguing that she herself would have found great success as a writer (her one book was published with a whimper) if she was not white. She is a complicated and eminently unlikable character with her wrong ideas and her grasping to hold onto the fame she has found, by any means necessary. She is not the only unlikable character here though. All of the characters are spiky and flawed, as is publishing itself. The industry is the subject of wicked, pointed satire, showcasing its penchant for choosing a single literary darling to be the voice of all people of a certain race. The dramatic narrative tension, as June scrambles to try and stay ahead of the rising backlash and finds herself terrorized by the perfect anonymity and hate of social media, is very well done.

This is very much a novel of our time, one of secrets, cultural appropriation and identity politics, racism, and diversity in publishing. That Kuang has made a novel with no likable characters so very readable is masterful. And let's not forget the delicious irony of an Asian American writer writing a novel centering a white author pretending to be an Asian American author. Layers upon layers upon layers.

Review: The Great British Bump Off by John Allison, Max Sarin, Sammy Borras, and Jim Campbell

I don't really watch television. And I don't really read graphic novels. Somehow I still thought it would be fun to read a graphic novel send-up of The Great British Bake Off where one of the contestants is poisoned. I do suspect that fans of the show who regularly read graphic novels will find this entertaining. I think I missed too much of what I imagine to be good natured satire because I don't have the background to catch it and I found the plot line without that background knowledge to be very thin.

Shauna Wickle is a contestant on the newest season of UK Bakery Tent. She's young and enthusiastic and quirky. When the story opens, Shauna is meeting and befriending two other contestants, an older grandmotherly white woman and a cool, gay man of color. The three new friends then witness a confrontation in the test kitchen. Neal, the classically handsome and impossibly insufferable contestant, clashes with the other bakers over the right to be in the test kitchen. When Shauna and her friends return to the tent later to try and befriend Neal, they discover him face down in a bowl of battered, poisoned. Rather than cancel the show, the producers allow Shauna to take over investigating who the poisoner is as the contest continues to play out.

Shauna is a completely bumbling investigator and is so distracted by trying to decide which of her fellow contestants is a poisoner that she performs terribly on each baking challenge. The trails she follows as she suspects several of her fellow bakers are thin at best and abruptly discarded without any evidence other than her deciding without cause that they are deadends. The characters here are all pretty intentionally cliched, which probably allows readers who are fans of GBBO a nice feeling of being in on the joke. One of the judges is the famous tv cook, the late Fanny Cradock who is a characature portrayed as rude, condescending, and as fearsome as the real critic was based on her very public late career downfall. This is probably the only joke that I, as a non-GBBO watcher, got. For some reason, there is a talking cat who is one of the co-hosts of the fictional show, a strange touch of magical whimsy in an otherwise goofy but straightforward whodunit. Sarin's artwork is exaggerated and over the top, with an almost anime feel to it, which is well done, playing into the cliches written by Allison.

Apparently this is the first in a series but it missed the mark for me so I won't be continuing with it. I am, however, sending it to a friend who is a huge GBBO fan and will be curious to hear her take on it.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

The Break-Up Pact by
Emma Lord.
The book is being released by St. Martins Griffin on August 13, 2024.

The book's jacket copy says: Two best friends who haven't spoken in ten years pretend to date after break-ups with their respective exes go viral, in this delightfully fun and deeply emotional novel from New York Times bestselling author Emma Lord.

June and Levi were best friends as teenagers--until the day they weren't. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they've barely spoken in years.

But after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own--a photo of them together has the internet convinced they're a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June's shop get back on its feet and make Levi's ex realize that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they're in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.

Two viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn't come with real feelings. Right?