Olivia Reichenbach’s Reviews > The Covenant of Water > Status Update

Philipose’s “meet the bride” and wedding/night is soooooo sweet😭😭

😀🙂😦😟 Philipose’s school journey.. damn

The parallels of Elise’s hand holding Digby’s, to then Digby’s hand holding Philipose 😭🙌🏽 those moments were written SO well, I was nearly in tears. I love the descriptions of Digby’s drawing after he and Elise finish. So powerful!!

“She is naive participant and horrified observer”. I hate this for her, and I hate how she feels so much pride over the smallest interactions with him, but it makes sense. He barely interacts with her and she has all these expectations to what her duties are, so she looks for crumbs in terms of praise/acknowledgment.

“She feels stupid & ashamed for not knowing that what was supposed to “unfold in its own time” meant this breach of her body. Meant taking him wholly into her insides. She feels betrayed by all the woman who withheld this knowledge from her, who might have better prepared her” and she’s having an experience with a gentle guy!! Did they not want to prepare her in case her husband was aggressive? This is bad.

Yikessss there are so many sad parts of this.. first of all, she’s been married to him for HOW many years and that whole time they had no books/she’s not been able to read a book or a Bible in years?? Hasn’t been able to see her mom or speak to another woman/girl her age in years? THEY GOT HER IN THIS ARRANGED MARRIAGE AND NEVER EXPLAINED SEX???

I enjoyed the part about the colonizers trying to bring Christianity to India, and their bewilderment because St Thomas had already been known in the area. It prompted me to start googling about St Thomas Christian’s and the background with Thomas the apostle