Day 254: The Brilliant Writing of Abraham Verghese

I don't usually provide commentary during a book other than my first impressions but this time I just can't help myself. 'The Covenant of Water' has some of the best writing I've ever seen, and I just have to talk about it. The control Abraham Verghese demonstrates over and over again continually blows me away. There are a half dozen things I could bring up that no author does quite as well, but the technique I'm most taken by is his ability to draw the reader's eye with perfect accuracy every time, and in such style too. He can go from the widest perspective possible of a landscape or a cultural phenomenon, but then use just a couple of details to draw down to a single character, or just one moment that puts you right back into the scene without missing a beat.

Take a look at this passage, where main character Digby Kilgour is on his way to a party in a rich neighborhood:

"Nungambakkam, where Claude Arnold resides, is a vision of England rendered on the canvas of southern India. Tree-lined avenues carry names like College Road, Sterling Road, and Haddows Road. The topiary outside the garden homes and bungalows is Bird-on-Pyramid, Ball-atop-Ball, and Bunny Rabbit, with little variation; Bunny Rabbit is the most popular."

Here it appears that Verghese is just describing the neighborhood of Claude Arnold (Digby's rival, who is a generally an awful person), but keep in mind that this story takes place during the British Raj, when the UK directly ruled India. The times lend an extra layer to this neighborhood being 'a vision of England.' He's giving important context not just for the place Digby is going, but the general culture here as well. Three sentences in and the reader already has so much information about this place. You have a visual representation of the neighborhood as a piece of England with tree lined avenues. A vague knowledge of the geography, even if you haven't read the rest of the book. A formless conception of the culture here informed by Claude Arnold's known status as an elite, further enhanced by the detail he includes about the topiaries, which probably look like this, but in rabbit form:

The only thing missing is our place in all of this. We see this as if from a bird's eye view, though I think that's not quite accurate. It is more of a formless notion at this point, a collection of details without a framework to put them on. To resolve a little bit of this uncertainty, Digby is placed in the scene with this next line:

"Digby thinks it’s the work of one itinerant maali, if for no other reason than that every Bunny Rabbit looks a little like a mongoose."

Now the topiary line is doing double duty. It first tells us these people are wealthy enough and care enough about appearances to contract excess labor just to have cool lawn ornamentation. Then he uses it to to put Digby in the scene. 'Digby thinks' is enough to make him present. He probably isn't thinking about how the neighborhood is a little slice of England in India though. He's used to this sort of thing by now. It could be he registers this without really thinking about it actively, or it could be narration. Since the line between unconscious thought and narration is initially so blurred, the reader needs some reassurance that Digby is actually there. How would you do that? Tell the reader what he's thinking about. What is he thinking about? The details Verghese just used of course.

The real genius here is that all of it was just a setup. We still don't know where Digby is in this scene exactly. We know the land, the class of person here, some visual details, and we know that Digby is there somewhere. Verghase could easily go straight into 'and Digby arrives at the big house Claude Arnold lives in,' and then we'd know just where he is and the scene could be gotten on with. Instead, he decides to tackle a bigger question about the status the neighborhood holds in India, while also giving us plenty of extra details.

"This fantasy of Belgravia in Madras must ignore the reality of the pariah dog’s corpse in the middle of College Road; it must stubbornly hold that this is indeed the eighth day of Christmas despite humidity that would dissuade eight maids a-milking from doing any such thing, and heat so relentless that the pariah dog, it turns out, isn’t dead, just felled by sunstroke."

Again, the amount of information he conveys is staggering when you stop to think about it. He calls the neighborhood a fantasy, a place that looks like England but will never truly be. This lines up with the greater narrative and the growing discontent with British rule at the time of the story. The stubborn hold it has stands opposite to the humidity and heat, so relentless it can fell a street dog. Religion plays a strong roll in the story and I think the idiom there about eight maids a milking is a reminder of who the characters pray to, given that many people in the story also follow Hinduism. Finally, we find out the dog isn't actually dead. How do we know this though? Well, because Digby finds out in this killer punchline that draws the reader down to Earth from lofty insights into the culture, climate, and religion:

"It staggers to its feet, forcing Digby to swerve around it on his bicycle."

Just a simple sentence that changes everything. And now, predictably, we can arrive at Claude's house and the story can continue now that the reader has such a strong grasp on the kind of place Digby is going:

"Claude’s porcelain-white home stands out against the red clay of the circular driveway that is packed with vehicles."

The scene goes on. I won't go line by line but I can tell you that each and every one of them is just as good as the last couple of paragraphs. You might think his writing is a bit meandering from this example. It really isn't though. When he does meander, it's for a very good reason. He hovers between straight prose, dialogue, inner thoughts, narration, and more meandering commentary on the state of the setting as in the previous. When he decides it's appropriate though, he gets straight to the point instantaneously. Take this excerpt a few pages later where Digby, who is a bit of an artist, is admiring Claude's lackluster taste in art.

"They’re rubbish, thank you very much. Fancy, gilded frames that cry “We belong in a museum” . . . but rubbish they are, and rubbish they’ll aye be. No matter how loud anyone cries . . .

'They’re not much, are they?' a husky female voice says.

He spins around, finding himself uncomfortably close to a woman; she is striking, a shade taller than he. They both step back. Her musky attar with notes of sandalwood and lost civilizations is the opposite of a Parisian scent. He feels transported to a maharani’s boudoir.'

'The bearer said you didn’t want whisky. I brought you some pomegranate juice. I’m Celeste,' she says, smiling.

Oh, please don’t be! Not his wife.

'I’m Claude’s wife.'"

Those last two lines smack you right in the face, just as hard as they hit Digby. Some context is missing here that makes this moment even more impactful. Earlier, as he walked into the party, he turned down a glass of whiskey from one of the servants. She clearly has been watching him since he arrived. Furthermore, he'd already noted the 'Parisian scents' around the room, putting Celeste in a league of her own because she doesn't follow the trends everyone else sticks to religiously. She even hates Claude's paintings too. But of course, she has to be Claude's wife. Otherwise the story just wouldn't be very interesting anymore, would it? So he gets right to it on that point.

I could go on about how each moment flows so well into the next, how the intricacies of this scene inform later moments in the plot, how the seeds of Arnold's downfall are being sown as we read. But you wouldn't notice all that in the moment, while Celeste takes Digby's attention by storm, and therefore also the reader's. This book is chock full of moments like these, where the depth of what's written goes so far beyond the words. I'll still do a longer review of this book when I finish of course, but I can already say I have to recommend you read it at all costs.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley