The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghes

I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis sounded so interesting and it takes place in India over the span of 1900 to 1977. This is a time frame of history I’ve always enjoyed in my previous historical fiction readings, but never in this region of the world. This book had so much hype and I was enthusiastic about it. But I am here to tell you it did not live up to the hype it was given, at least not in my perspective.

Initially, Abraham uses some vocabulary that I was not familiar with, in terms of things, phrases or slang common in India during this time period. While I don’t normally have an issue with that, these terms were not explained, so I as a reader was left guessing what these terms meant based on the context I could gather around them. I have no idea if I was guessing right on some of the stuff. For me, that made it hard to truly immerse myself in the story.

Right off the bat, I felt the struggle of this novel. It laid out three different stories in the first few sections of the book, and each part of the book would jump to different characters and a different time frame. I was left in confusion on how these stories intersected or mattered to each other. Eventually that was answered, but I felt disengaged by that point. I also felt like I was finally getting into one of the stories and then a different part of the story would be picked up, so I would lose interest again. The lack of interest in the story increased around 200 pages in and I really had to fight through to finish the story.

I did enjoy the depth of the characters Abraham created. I was able to pick up on some of their traits and things throughout the story, so that was positive.

The length of the story also made it hard for me. At almost 800 pages, I felt a lot of it was mundane and seemed to drag on way longer than I felt necessary. I rate this one 2 1/2 ⭐️s. Not one I would solidly recommend to others.