Month: September 2023

The Covenant of Water

By Abraham Vergeshe

Published 2023

Read June 2023

It’s fitting that the first literature blog I’ve written in almost a year is for this book.  It’s long.  It’s full of medical details.  It may be exasperating to some because the main characters are all so fundamentally good.  But it is so well done.  After nearly a year of reading lots of books but few “serious” ones this book definitely engaged me thoroughly and left me unable to start a new book for several days.  Perhaps this is a strange criteria for categorization of books but a real one for me.  When a book leaves me in a state of savoring and digesting and waiting for those actions to be thoroughly over before I start a new book, it’s definitely in a winner’s circle for me. 

We start in 1900 when one of our protagonists is twelve years old and being married off to a man of forty.  We are ready to hate him but can’t.  He needs a mother for his son.  He needs someone to cook and clean and make a home for him and his son as he works hard to create something from nothing on this growing piece of property on a river— a river he avoids with a passion we slowly come to understand over the next 700 pages.  Only when our protagonist—now known as Big Aimichee— is sixteen and has past puberty, learned to cook and clean well, has firmly become JoJo’s mother, and has begun to appreciate her husband, does this husband invite our protagonist into his bedroom. 

She first bears him a daughter, who they learn will remain a child in thoughts and actions, but a beloved one to both her family and this reader.  She later bears him a son when she is older, Philopose, who doesn’t know his father who dies. 

There are other characters in this sprawling book whose stories eventually connect.  None of the characters are “bad” or “evil” some certainly have more flaws than others. 

This reader prefers this book to the author’s earlier “Cutting for Stone” although this reader nominated that book for her book club which discussed it with vigor.  The characters are rounder and most win your affection and have you cheering for them when they are facing adversity tough choices.  They don’t always pick the route you would choose for them but that of course makes the book engaging and believable.  Read and relish this book. 

The Patron Saint of Liars

By Ann Patchett

Published 1992

Read April 2022

Run

By Ann Patchett

Published 2007

Read May 2022

This reader is putting comments on these two books together as the comments are quite overdue. 

This reader is a fan of Ann Patchett.  Each novel tells a unique and interesting story.  Each novel provides the reader interesting characters.  Often the story is told through the perspective of one or more characters, but only some of the character is revealed through this approach, much is left unsaid and untold.  That makes the novel both engaging and rich for this reader.

The Patron Saint of Liars, Patchett’s first novel, tells pieces of the overall story through four sections, each focused on one of the characters, human and otherwise.  The first section is about the origins of Hotel Louisa in the small town of Habit, Kentucky.  By the time this story starts in 1968, the hotel has become a home for unmarried pregnant women, run by a Catholic order of nuns.  Rose’s section is second and tells us about a woman who leaves her husband (with only a note saying she is leaving and he shouldn’t try to find her) when she discovers she is pregnant and decides she can’t go through with the pregnancy.  She winds up at the home for unwed mothers in Habit, KY, installs herself as an unpaid member of the staff, keeps her child, marries Son, another person who ended up a member of the staff, and raises daughter Cecilia in a non-standard way.   The third section is told through Son’s perspective which gives some background regarding why he is there and why he didn’t want “their” daughter to be named Cecilia.  The last section is told through Sissy/Cecilia’s perspective.  Some things are explained, much isn’t.  This reader found the balance perfect.

Run tells a story about an unusual family.  Bernadette Doyle expected to have a large Irish family like her own but she and husband Bernard succeed in having only one biological child, Sullivan.  They adopt a pair of brothers forming a biracial family (the twins are black).  Bernadette dies when the “little boys” are 4 and Sullivan is 17.  The story is focused on a time 17 years later when the little boys are in college (remaining in Boston per their ex-Boston Mayor father’s wishes) and Sullivan only occasionally interacts with the family.  The boys (once again) reluctantly accompany their father to a lecture on campus that their father wants them to attend.  An incident that occurs after the lecture sets into motion a more complicated story about their family than they could have imagined (and which won’t be divulged here).  As usual Patchett slowly develops the characters but leaves some things unexplained.   Once again, the balance was fine for this reader. This reader will continue seeking and reading Patchett novels and hopes she has a very long run of writing.