I have three good novels for you, and they all happen to be set — at least partly — in southern Asia.
The first to be mentioned has to be “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese, who wrote “Cutting for Stone.” This is Oprah’s summer pick, and it’s a big one: 775 pages long. If you like an epic, here’s your summer read.
The book takes us to the southern coast of India between the years 1900 and 1977. Here we follow three generations of a family who share a medical mystery: In every generation at least one person dies by drowning. The family members wonder, “Is the Condition a curse? Or a disease? Is there really a difference?”
As the book starts, we meet a 12-year-old girl on the day she sets off for her wedding to a man she’s never met. She will become “Big Ammachi,” the matriarch of the family. In seemingly disparate storylines, we meet doctors from several countries. Digby Kilgour emigrates from Scotland in 1933 and “joined the Indian Medical Service, hoping to develop as a surgeon.” Once he arrives, “He’s ashamed to realize that here in British India, he’s white and that puts him above anyone who is not.”
There are SO many rich characters (including an elephant) and there’s SO much going on here: a family saga, births, deaths, a few love stories, a ghost story, a bit of history, some political and caste controversy, leprosy and other medicine (the writing of which rings true because of the author’s medical background), art and literature (“Art is never finished. Only abandoned.”), religion, and philosophy: “What did it matter? We are dying while we’re living, we are old even when we’re young, we are clinging to life even as we resign ourselves to leaving it.”
There’s even quite a bit about the joy of reading, along with some beautiful writing: “If her son had a calling, had one passion, it was for words on a page, and the magical way they could transport him and his listeners to faraway lands. … ‘Ammachi, when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I’ve lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia, and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.’ ”
The seemingly unrelated storylines come together, providing a surprising ending that uplifts the spirit: my kind of book.
I love some of the author’s phrases: “Digby watches a middle-aged couple navigate the packed dance floor; they’ve been married for so long that their bodies have left impressions on each other.” And “When the monsoon arrives and the clouds open, she’s ecstatic. In her father’s house, she and her cousin would oil their hair and step out into the downpour with their soap and coconut-fiber scrub, delighting in the heavenly waterfall. … The dust and the shed skins of insects cemented to stalks are swept away, leaving a brilliant shine on leaves.”
Yummy.
“The Great Reclamation” by Rachel Heng is set in Singapore. The story begins in 1941, when the country is under British rule, but yearns for independence.
Seven-year-old Ah Boon is a fisherman’s son. He’s a quiet boy, “the sweetest, most sensitive boy” in the fishing village. The first time his father takes him out on the fishing boat with him, a wondrous thing happens: They come upon an island his father has never seen before. Is it a mirage? The men go back without Ah Boon and can’t find the island at all. Did they imagine it? Is it magical? They go back with Ah Boon, and there it is! They have discovered the boy has a gift: He can “find” islands and schools of fish, a boon to his family and to the whole village.
Ah Boon’s best friend is the daughter of political activists who have left her with relatives so they can continue the fight for independence. As she grows up, she will follow in their footsteps, becoming more and more political.
During World War II, the village is occupied by the Japanese. This time of horror is “an interminable four years” until the war ends in 1945 and the British return.
As Singapore strives for independence, it is creating a new country in more ways than one. The fishing village becomes part of the country’s great reclamation, actually forming more land along the coast, “reclaiming” it from the sea.
The writing lets the reader see the action: “The countryside seemed to roll by forever, endless swaths of old spreading trees with parasitic ferns perched in their joints, the occasional clusters of roadside vendors, houses of attap and zinc roofs. Then all of a sudden the emptiness would give way to the noise and crowds of the city — row after row of wooden houses; children spilling out of open doors chasing bedraggled chickens; lone dogs rummaging in heaps of trash; tanned, wizened old men gliding gracefully on bicycles over potholes.”
The love story between the boy and girl is complex; think Cathy and Heathcliff. The first part of the book is like a fantasy, but the rest is all too real. The use of Pidgin English annoyed me; the author often used it when friends and family were talking among themselves. Why use it when they’re speaking in their native tongue? But it’s a good story.
“The East Indian” by Brinda Charry is an adventure in the 17th century that begins along India’s southern coast and moves to Europe and North America.
We meet Tony as a child in India. He never knew his father, but because he was a well-known medicine man, Tony wants to work with medicines too someday. His grandmother likes to tell him “the ancient legends of the gods … some colossal, some diminutive, some with the countenances of men and women, some animal-featured, most of them multilimbed, all beautiful and terrible and grand.”
A representative of the English East India Company befriends him and teaches him English and how to read. Tony gets to go to London so that he can go to school. But there he is kidnapped and taken to the New World, arriving in 1635 in Jamestown, Virginia, as an indentured servant. This makes him the first native of the Indian subcontinent to arrive in America.
In America, his dark skin will be a problem, as the African slave trade is becoming widespread. Tony is forced to work on the tobacco plantations, but along the way he also gets to learn about medicine. He makes friends with a madwoman, has some unusual encounters, and suffers brutality from a recurring villain.
The author paints some pretty pictures: “We stumbled upon a valley of flowers. Red, violet, pink, yellow, white, purple blooms grew all around us, thrusting from the earth, bursting from bushes in unimaginable profusion. Even Master Walsh, who knew about such things, was astounded at the abundance. … We stood there in silence, gazing at this wonder in the wilderness. A spectacle that existed solely so it could be, with no beholder in mind.”
Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the Record-Courier, where she was an editor.