Cornflower Books

Oprah meets Abraham

    If you've read or are reading Abraham Verghese's marvellous novel The Covenant of Water (post here) or are familiar with his other books you may like to watch his interview with Oprah. 

    He comes across exactly as I had imagined him from his writing, and the conversation is a lovely one. I believe it's the first in a series.

Friday miscellany: prizes, picnics, rivers...

    Prizes are in the news this week with the winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction announced as Lucy Caldwell's These Days, and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead winning the Women's Prize for Fiction. Next year will see the first Women's Prize for Non-fiction.

    My friend Sarah Salway has written a lovely essay on literary picnics.

    Oliver Burkeman offers a new way of looking at your TBR pile.

A Fortunate Woman

    In the 1960s John Berger wrote the book A Fortunate Man, following Dr. John Sassall (a pseudonym) as he ministered to his patients in rural Gloucestershire. I read the re-issue a couple of years ago and found it interesting but somehow lacking; there was an emotional reticence about it, perhaps of its time, which made me feel I didn't really get to the heart of the complex man it portrayed.

    Writer and documentary-maker Polly Morland happened to come upon her mother's long-forgotten copy of that book and realised that its location was her home valley, and that her own GP was the current incumbent of Dr. Sassall's role as head of the medical practice there. Her book A Fortunate Woman is her account of the working life of the unnamed lady doctor - for whom Berger's portrait had been influential - and her examination of what it means to be 'a good doctor'.

    General practice is "a job which requires both heart and head"; the doctor "is there to help carry the heavy time, so that her patients may seek out lighter days again." "Her life's work is not simply about the application of a body of knowledge to an assortment of human objects. Nor is it the static state of being a qualified doctor who holds that body of knowledge. It is iterative, a virtuous activity in the true Aristotelian sense: a pursuit meaningful in and of itself, both ethically and interpersonally. It is becoming rather than knowing, and its lifeblood is trust."

  This book gave me everything I sought and didn't find in Berger's. It is beautifully written and highly readable, a deeply involving and very moving look at an extraordinarily demanding job, at the woman who does it with great humanity, empathy, patience and wisdom, and an assessment of what that skill and dedication mean for and to the community the doctor serves. I can't praise it too highly; it's simply outstanding.

The Covenant of Water

    To re-iterate the above, this novel is majestic and sweeping, it's also utterly engrossing, staggering in both its scale and detail, hugely enjoyable - I could go on with what might sound like hyperbole but for this reader is not the slightest exaggeration; it's superb.

    Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water begins in southern India in 1900, and - with a slight detour to 1920s Glasgow - follows a family until the 1970s. Over the course of the decades there are the inevitable births, marriages, deaths, dreams pursued - or not, hopes raised and dashed, secrets kept and ultimately uncovered. Written by a physician, medicine is at the book's core, and underpins its themes and most fascinating scenes; it sheds light on what it means - and takes - to be a doctor, on medical practice at its essence and in its ideal form, and gives to the story a dimension which sets it apart from other books of this scale and type. It's written with so much heart, I feel as though its author would be a joyous, enriching and fascinating person to meet.

    I realise that for a very long book this is an extremely short post, but there's really no need for me to say more than to urge you to read it!

A bit of catching up

    What have I been reading since last we spoke? Well, John Moore's The Waters under the Earth was utterly absorbing, and when I finished it I handed it to Mr. C. who rattled through it in no time at all and enjoyed it every bit as much as I did. Yes, it's long (and would be chopped quite a bit were it submitted to an editor these days, I think), but its portrait of a family in changing times - it's set in the early 1950s - is a sensitively vivid one which offers welcome detail rather than a broad brush. Moore is wonderful on the natural world, too, - see this snippet, for example - and on the march of 'progress' which threatens to impoverish rather than enrich the whole, and he's good on shifting societal attitudes and mores, and the opening up of possible futures for people whose options had before been confined. A new reality intrudes on the settled world of the main character Ferdo and his beloved ancient oak woods, harsh truths must now be confronted rather than denied. I'll leave it there and let you discover for yourself, as I hope you will, its intricacies and many charms. 

    Next came Sean Ashton's The Way to Work, a cleverly surreal novel set on a commuter train. In its early stages it reminded me of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in its Escher-like depiction of a never-ending chain of carriages with weird rules and systems and no apparent means of alighting, but then, if you'll pardon the pun, it went off the rails a bit and left me a touch travel-sick; another reader may of course settle very comfortably to the more disorienting elements of the story.

    Now I'm on to Abraham Verghese's new novel The Covenant of Water which is a whopper at over 700 pages, but almost half way through I can say that for my taste not a word is superfluous and I can't wait to read on.

    What have you been reading recently? Anything you would particularly recommend?