I like big books and I cannot lie

yeah okay well should we start diving into them and then we can naturally sure do you want to kick us off extracurricular yeah So this is The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, which comes in at 736 pages.

It's incredibly heavy, sharp corned.

And here's the synopsis for you.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, this book follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction.

In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.

And in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century, a 12-year-old girl grieving the death of her father is sent by boat to her wedding where she will meet her 40-year-old husband for the first time.

From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch, known as Big Amici, will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship.

And I'll end it there.

It's...

Yeah, it's probably decent to not probably, but obviously if it's going to span 77 years.

there's going to be way more to it than just this one person's life.

Yeah.

So family suck.

Not only have I read two massive books, they're also both been family sellers.

So I have actually been in my happy place.

And yeah, so we, as it's mentioned, we meet her as a young girl and going over to meet her husband and whatever.

And then, yeah, from there, she, as it says, she becomes a matriarch.

So obviously in that time you meet her, um lots of other family members so she actually has like a stepson sort of when she arrives and then they have their own child and then we follow that child's life as he meets someone and has his own child so we span lots of different generations and then yeah as it says at least one person dies by drowning and there is so much death in this book not all drowning just a lot of death and i was just like i was explaining it to people i was with and they were oh like what's going on in your book now and i was like and someone else has died like i'm having a nice time but someone else is like there's a lot of drowning there's a lot of this and i was also reading it by the sea and i was like do i go in the sea drowning and There's also another sort of subplot.

All of a sudden, I was in India reading all of these things.

And then suddenly, I was meeting Digby, this Scottish man who had come over to India to work in medicine.

And I was like, who the fuck are you? How is this relevant? And he only really becomes entwined with the family in like the last third of the book.

So sometimes you're just sort of switching to this other point of view.

I mean, I don't think it's told in first person, but like, yeah, you basically switch over to what he's doing sometimes, which is interesting and kind of nice, I guess, in a big book to break it up and like change villages, what's going on.

Like his are obviously heavily medical people.