“Somewhere I Have Never Travelled Redux”

~ Elizabeth

I just finished listening to Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. His previous novel, Cutting for Stone is one of my favorites, and I had looked forward to this new one. Set in southwest India, it, like The Great Reclamation, spans many years as it traces one extended family. At 31 hours, the book took many evenings to complete. This audiobook was read by the author, which made me cherish the language and the sounds of the places. I just bought the book itself to reread, now knowing how to pronounce all the words.

My blog title quote from e.e. cummings reads “somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience.” I chose the phrase since it accurately describes the broadening of my reading since I began blogging. Knowing people around the world has made me curious about those places. Even though I have never been to Singapore or India, my readers either have been or live there. That makes the locations feel more personal to me, and I want to immerse myself in them through fiction.

The experience parallels my relationship with U.S. history. Throughout school I struggled to remember dates. Once I began doing family genealogy the dates became easy to connect to actual relatives. I even began to understand the meaning of other historic events as when I learned of my forebear fighting for Cromwell and being “awarded” an Irish estate. “Anglo-Irish,” a phrase I had learned when studying Yeats, now had a specific meaning for me.

I would love to know of other novels that will take me “gladly beyond my experience.” Please share.

15 thoughts on ““Somewhere I Have Never Travelled Redux””

  1. When history comes alive with real people, it makes all the difference in the world. If I taught history, I’d incorporate people, places, books…anything to bring in something real and make a connection.

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  3. A fascinating post, Elizabeth. Sticking with India I could say the same about Vikram Seth’s “A suitable boy”, but it is bloggers the world over who have broadened my scope

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  4. Elizabeth, I read this book by a Nobel Prize-winning author in my late teens, and was overwhelmed by the experience. Once I got past the huge ‘cast list’ of characters, I was immersed in the epic history of Russia during the period, and the inside knowledge of the Cossack people in modern times. It made me want to travel to the Soviet Union, which I later did on three occasions, including to Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Central Asia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Quiet_Flows_the_Don
    There is also a sequel, ‘The Don Flows Home To The Sea’.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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