Libro.fm Podcast – Episode 25: “Interview with Abraham Verghese”

On today’s episode, we sat down in person with bestselling author and physician, Dr. Abraham Verghese. His most recent novel, The Covenant of Water, was an instant New York Times Bestseller, an Oprah Book Club Pick, and one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2023. We discussed his research process, how he auditioned to narrate his own book, how his work as a physician impacts his writing, and his recipe for “bachelor chicken.”

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About our guest

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Audiobooks by Abraham Verghese

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Audiobooks we discussed

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Full transcription

Craig Silva:

Hi, and welcome to the Libro.fm podcast, where we talk to authors, narrators, booksellers, and more. I’m Craig.

Karen Farmer:

And I’m Karen. During this episode, we got to sit down with Abraham Verghese, who is a physician, a professor. He’s an author of four bestselling books, two of which are memoirs, two of which are novels. And the one that you have probably seen everywhere right now is the newest, The Covenant of Water. It came out in 2023, I think it was an instant New York Times bestseller, an Oprah Book Club pick, and one of Obama’s favorite books of 2023.

Craig Silva:

I like that you’re reading his description. He’s like a physician, a professor, an author of New York Times bestsellers. I’m like, I’m a designer, a podcaster, and that’s it.

Karen Farmer:

Sometimes I knit when I have extra time.

Craig Silva:

You know what, I bet he can knit too, honestly.

Karen Farmer:

I wouldn’t be surprised. I believe he can do everything.

Craig Silva:

The hardest thing about this podcast is meeting people that are so much smarter and talented than I am.

Karen Farmer:

They’re so smart and so talented, and 100% of the time the nicest, most humble people I’ve ever met. And Abraham is a perfect example of that.

Craig Silva:

This episode, like our Stacey Abrams episode, we recorded in person at the Texas Book Festival. So nice to meet Abraham in person and at the end take pictures together, which maybe we’ll post somewhere, but…

Karen Farmer:

Yes.

Craig Silva:

Without further ado, why don’t I get right into the episode? But before I do that, I’m going to play a clip from Abraham’s newest book, The Covenant of Water. And please note the narrator, is like we just said, he’s a physician, a professor and author. Why not an audiobook narrator? He also narrates his own audiobook, which if you listen to this podcast before you’ll know is kind of rare for an author, especially for a fiction book, to narrate their own book.

Karen Farmer:

And one that’s 30 hours long.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, it’s so long. And I listened and you will all listen to the clip in just a minute. There’s accents and so many different characters, and he crushes it. Abraham is just, it’s not fair, but enjoy the clip.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Let’s get it going. Just as a reminder, be sure to subscribe to the podcast for future episodes. We have a lot of good ones coming up that I’m very excited about. We’ll talk a little bit about that at the end, so stick around. And remember that if you aren’t a Libro.fm member yet, you can use the code LIBROPODCAST and you’ll get two credits for your first month instead of just one.

Abraham Verghese:

1900 Travancore, South India.

The journey to the groom’s church takes almost half a day. The boatman steers them down a maze of unfamiliar canals overhung by flaming red hibiscus. The house was so close to the edge, she could touch a squatting old woman winnowing rice with flicks of a flat basket. She can hear a boy reading the Menorahma newspaper to a sightless ancient who rubs his head, as if the news hurt. House after house, each a little universe, some with children her age, watching them pass, “Where are you going?”

“Us?” A bare-chested, busybody through black teeth. His black index finger, his toothbrush covered in powdered charcoal. Frozen in midair, the boatman glares at him. Out from the canals, now onto a carpet of lotus and lilies so thick she could walk across it. The flowers are opened like well-wishers, and possibly she picks one blossom, grabbing the stem anchored deep down. It comes free with a splash of pink jewel. A miracle that something so beautiful can emerge from water so murky. Her uncle looks pointedly at her mother who says nothing. Though she worries that her daughter will dirty her white blouse and mundu, or the covenant with faint gold trim. A fruity scent fills the boat. She counts 24 petals. Pushing through the lotus carpet, they emerge onto a lake so wide that the far shore is invisible, the water still and smooth. She wonders if the ocean looks like this.

Karen Farmer:

All right. Hello, everyone. We are here at the Texas Book Festival in Austin with author Abraham Verghese, bestselling author most recently of The Covenant of Water. Welcome to the podcast, Abraham.

Abraham Verghese:

It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. We know you’re super busy. We were just talking about how you have to head out right after this and give a big talk. So we will try to make this brief. For people who may not be familiar with your work, can you just give a brief introduction about yourself?

Abraham Verghese:

Sure. So Abraham Verghese is my name and I’m a physician and a writer. My first two books were nonfiction about things that had been important to me in work. One was about HIV in a small town of what looked like an outbreak. The second was about doctors and drugs. And then I wrote two novels. Cutting for Stone was my last one, and the latest one is called The Covenant of Water.

Craig Silva:

So perfect segue. The Covenant of Water is getting tons of buzz at Libro and everywhere else, so congratulations on that. We would love, for people that are unfamiliar with this novel, if you could just give us a brief synopsis of what they can expect.

Abraham Verghese:

Sure. So I’m originally from, or my parents are from the south of India, a place called Kerala. It’s a little strip of coastal territory, full of water, sort of trapped between the sea and the mountain. Lots of rivers, lakes, and people communicate and get around by water. And I loved the idea of setting a story in that landscape. And within our community, we are a Christian community who believed that our Christianity came when St. Thomas the Apostle landed on the shores of India in 52 A.D.

And so, it’s a sort of a niche community with some Hindu customs. And my novel is about three generations of one family who have a unique sort of curse. And that is, in every generation of the family going back many generations, one or more members drowns in water, even though… They always drown in water, I guess. They drown, even though they avoid water, they have a condition that makes them averse to water, and yet they manage to drown in shallow bonds of water. And so, the conceit of the book is trying to solve this riddle of what is this condition? And it takes place between 1900 and 1977. Big, epic novel, which readers seemed to be enjoying.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, the research for this must have been intense, I feel like.

Abraham Verghese:

It was pretty intense. I was really helped by, in fact, I was inspired by the fact that my mother, when she was in her 70s, she was asked by my niece who was five-years-old and my mom was in America, she was asked, “Ahmaji, or grandmother, what was it like when you were a five-year-old girl?”

And my mother, who had grown up in India, studied there, went to Africa to teach, then came to New Jersey to teach. She didn’t know where to begin. So she began writing this wonderful memoir, or anecdotes of her childhood, illustrated, and it went to 110 pages, and sort of a treasured thing in the family. And when I revisited that after writing Cutting for Stone, and I thought this is where I should set my novel. And so, I did do a lot of research. I went back to Kerala many, many times. I was very familiar with it from summer vacations there, but nevertheless, there was a lot of research and work to be done.

Karen Farmer:

You mentioned the illustrations, and I know that there are illustrations in The Covenant of Water. Can you tell us about those?

Abraham Verghese:

Sure. So as I said, my mom was a pretty gifted artist and she did these quick sketches of things like ordinary kitchen implements, and costumes, and fruits like the cashew fruit, within which is the cashew nut. And so, we wanted to try and recapture those kinds of line drawings. And as it turns out, my mother’s godson is my cousin and he lives not far from me, and he’s a very gifted artist himself. So I sort of showed him mom’s book and he came up with a whole series of beautiful drawings, of which we picked 10 to go with each section of the book. And so, it’s been a delight to have him in this book with me, so to speak.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t draw them. I was like, that’s just too much talent for one person. So that’s awesome.

Karen Farmer:

One thing that is really unique about you as the author of this book is that you also narrated the audiobook. We ask authors about this a lot and usually get the answer, “No, no, no, I don’t do that. I save that for somebody else.” And just hearing you here talk about this in your own words is so beautiful. So I’m very excited that it’s you narrating the book. It’s quite a long one. I believe it’s around 31 hours. Can you tell us a little bit about what that process was like to record all of this?

Abraham Verghese:

Yeah, I mean, it would not normally have occurred to me to think about narrating the book, although I did narrate my second non-fiction book and an abridged version. But Cutting for Stone was performed by a very gifted young actor in LA, and yet only I would recognize this, there were nuances in the way that he pronounced certain words that just got under my skin. I never said it to him. I didn’t have the heart to say it to him, because he actually won awards for his narration. Now this book, Covenant is full of ethnic terms and many different sort of dialects with their inflections, and I just couldn’t imagine even the most talented, like a Tom Hanks or someone, really being able to master those things. So I decided to audition and literally audition it. I told the folks at recorded books, I don’t want to do this unless I’m the best of all the people that you have.

And so, I auditioned and they decided to go with me. And I really had a steep learning curve in sort of learning how I needed to perform the book. That’s how I needed to adjust the pitch of my voice to indicate on one page whether a male is speaking or a female is speaking. I needed to learn Glaswegian accents and Edinburgh accents, and Newcastle Geordie accents, and all the regional Indian accents. And it was a great deal of fun. I had a wonderful producer and director in the studio, as well as a studio technician. And whenever we were stumped by something like that, we would get on YouTube and listen to someone in a very classic accent. And again, you don’t overdo the accents, but just enough to bring the reader along. And I’ll have to confess to you that when I was done and they had cleaned up all the, they used AI to clean up all what they call the clicks, and stomach noise, and this and that, and I finally got to listen to it. I didn’t like the sound of my voice.

Craig Silva:

Oh, no. That’s us on every episode of this podcast.

Karen Farmer:

Yes, we feel that way listening to the podcast.

Craig Silva:

Although the stakes are a bit lower.

Abraham Verghese:

And I think it’s because we’re just not used to hearing the sound of our voice outside the echo chamber of our skull. So it’s been very, very gratifying to me that the book has been so well received, one of the top 20 audiobooks we’re told as of yesterday. And it’s been number one for a while. So that’s been immensely gratifying to me and to have people tell me that they just loved hearing the story in my voice, it gave me a lot of confidence to maybe do it again one day, I don’t know.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Well, maybe you’ll be up for one of the audio awards this year. We will root for you. You have our vote.

Abraham Verghese:

That would be lovely. That would be lovely.

Craig Silva:

Speaking of recording, I saw that you are a fellow podcaster and it blows my mind that you are a full-time doctor, teaching, you are a novelist, and you also do a podcast. And I think at this point you have over 80 episodes. With everything going on, why did you decide to take this journey and do this?

Abraham Verghese:

Well, I don’t think I’m in the same league as you guys by any means. Our podcasts are fairly infrequent, but there’s an organization called Medscape, which is a huge organization in terms of many, many physicians get their continuing medical education and their specialty information through this. And so, they have a built-in audience. And the editor is a very well-known physician scientist, Eric Topol. And so, he and I decided to do this podcast that we called Medicine and the Machine, where we’re sort of trying to balance the new technologies with the human element of medicine. And then COVID came along soon after we started and Eric became one of the leading lights in explaining COVID research. And so, we had all these wonderful guests who would come and explain different facets of this as the epidemic was evolving.

We’re actually going to wind it down very soon. And part of that is I think both of us have the sense that when one has done something well, it’s not necessary to do it forever. And similarly with this book Covenant, I’m always asked now, “When is your next book coming about?” Honestly, I feel like I don’t know if there’ll be a next book. I mean, if I feel like I put my heart and soul into this book and the tank is completely empty, I will probably write again, but it’ll be hubris to think that I can do another one just like this, because it was such an effort over 14 years. So in that vein, we were glad to sort of wind down our podcast. I think the last episode, will be some sometime next month and then that’s it.

Craig Silva:

Oh wow. We got this question in right at the nick of time.

Karen Farmer:

Right in time.

Abraham Verghese:

It’s like watching things on television where one season of something is perfect, by the seventh season you sort of feel like they’re dragging this too much, so better to leave them longing. No reference to what you guys are doing, because yours is timeless. You have all these new audiobooks coming out and plenty to talk about, but we felt that we had milked it for what it was worth, what we were doing.

Craig Silva:

I think if we make it to 80 episodes, I’ll feel okay about it.

Karen Farmer:

We’re not quite there yet. Abraham, we found an article on, I think it was on Oprah Daily, and it showed a photo of your at-home whiteboard, which had some very complex, and interesting, and beautiful notes on it. Can you tell us a little bit about what your whiteboard in that process is?

Abraham Verghese:

Yeah, I mean, I’m afraid it’s going to be a disappointing story in the sense that I very much wanted with this novel, considering how much time I had taken on the previous novel, which was eight years, I had very much wanted on this novel to do my best to sketch it out, to have the whole map, the blueprint of this house that I was going to write. But what would happen is I’d put up this elaborate whiteboard, and I think visually I’m not as good an artist as my mother, but I like to sort of draw the figures and faces I have in mind, and I would put up this storyboard so to speak. But when I started writing, the story would take off in another direction. The characters would dictate that they weren’t going to do this. There’s a famous saying in writing that characters determined by decisions taken under pressure. So I would put my character under pressure and then they would take off in a direction, not the one I planned on the whiteboard. So then I’d photograph the whiteboard, erase it, start again.

Craig Silva:

Photograph the whiteboard, show it to them and be like, “Didn’t you see the plan?”

Abraham Verghese:

So the whiteboard has become something of a interesting side note to the novel, but I guess I’m fated to be one of these novelists who sort of following a voice, and pushing this dream state further and further without really having an architectural plan.

Karen Farmer:

That’s beautiful. Thank you.

Craig Silva:

So to go back to your medical profession, being a doctor is a job that takes such rigor and discipline, and can sometimes be unpredictable with different patient cases, or a pandemic that comes along. And being a writer also takes rigor and discipline, but it is a more controlled environment. It can be predictable. You’re in seemingly control of what comes out. And I’m curious if your work as a doctor or a writer has informed either job for you.

Abraham Verghese:

Yeah, I think that I’ve always resisted the notion that I wear two hats, that I’m a doctor and then I’m a writer, because I feel that I’m an old physician. That’s the great passion of my life. That’s the thing I began with. I never set about to write until that HIV story that I mentioned. That was my first book, My Own Country. So when I sit down to write, it’s the same lens through which I’m seeing my day job and the patients that I bring to the narrative. So they’re not two different things. I’m also a very slow writer, so I don’t watch a lot of television. I don’t play golf, and it takes me a long, long time to write a novel. So I think one of the great things about having a profession you love is that you don’t have to be in a hurry.

When I’m asked for writing advice, which is not very often, I will often say get a good day job that you love. And I’m not being facetious, because I think it’s so hard for writers to have to make a living and send the kids to college based on this book, and then the next one, and the next one. It puts so much pressure in the writing and I’ve been blessed not to have that, so I can really take my time. Which is not to say that I don’t have ambitions for my book, that I don’t want them to do well. But on the other hand, if they don’t do well, I’m all right. I still have a profession I love. So that’s the kind of freedom that I’ve enjoyed. I don’t know if that directly answers your question, I should also add that-

Craig Silva:

No, it’s perfect.

Abraham Verghese:

That the writing often is my way of processing what I see at work. And so, I often find that even if I’m writing about something quite peripheral to what I saw at work, it’s the feelings, the mood, the truth that I came to, and that I can only come to sometimes in writing. I think many of us feel that we write in order to understand what we’re truly thinking. So lots of us in medicine are moved by what we see, but there’s a level of meta understanding that I think only comes when you’re writing, even if you’re not writing about it. If you’re just writing about your feelings, you come to a new plane of understanding.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you so much for that answer. I almost hate to do this, but we have some silly questions for you now.

Abraham Verghese:

Absolutely.

Karen Farmer:

Because I know we don’t have a ton of time. We wanted to ask you a few lightning round questions. These should be pretty quick to answer. And I think Craig has the first one for you.

Craig Silva:

Yes. You are related to a lot of very excellent cooks who have even published cookbooks, and we want to know what is your favorite thing that they have ever made for you?

Abraham Verghese:

Well, I know some very elegant cooks who write these masterful cookbooks, but one of them, my great friend Lathika George, who wrote this book called the Kerala Cookbook, she taught me something called bachelor chicken, which I absolutely love.

Craig Silva:

Bachelor chicken.

Karen Farmer:

What?

Abraham Verghese:

Bachelor chicken. And you just need a nice, like you say, pot that really holds the heat well. You toss some chicken and then you toss whatever’s in your fridge. It was just typically some onions, garlic and some mustard seed. And then whatever veggies and potatoes you have around, you put it in simmer, put the lid on, and you walk away. And you come back an hour or two later, more like two hours later, and it has never failed me, and it’s never the same. So that must be my absolute favorite.

Craig Silva:

I love that. That’s risky. If it’s just whatever’s in your fridge that could go south.

Abraham Verghese:

Pretty much you still need a little salt and pepper, and if you like it spicy, you need red pepper. But otherwise it’s whatever’s left over, toss it in there. And the key is this pot on low traps all the moisture, there’s plenty of fat in the chicken itself. And so, you have basically a slow cooker, not quite as slow as a slow cooker and delicious.

Karen Farmer:

That sounds fantastic.

Craig Silva:

Love it.

Karen Farmer:

I’m in. I saw something on your Instagram that indicated that you have a lot of Batman figurines in your office in Stanford, and I would love to know more about that.

Abraham Verghese:

When my two older boys were very young, they got into this phase of really getting into Batman comics on TV, but they also, there was this great marketing that every couple of weeks there would be a new Batman figure to buy. And it was Arctic Batman, it was Deep Sea Dive Batman, it was Batman’s special mobile, and then his plane. And so, over time, and they would just dream about the next figure and talk about it, and then finally we’d get it, and it would absorb them for a couple of days completely, and all these elaborate fantasies, and then the next one would come along. But at some point they outgrew it. But I never let go of the figures, because I was just caught up in the same elaborate story, watching them spin these stories. And now I have all these figures on my office desk.

Karen Farmer:

I love it.

Abraham Verghese:

And I realized that my kids care nothing about it, but to me they’re deeply meaningful. I’m not even sure what they mean, but they represent a bit of nostalgia about my kid’s childhood. They represent my childhood, I suppose, and they represent storytelling at its very, very best.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you so much. We have one more Instagram question for you. We typically do something called Instagram Storytime, where we look back through all your photos you’ve posted and find one that we want to ask you about. And I think Craig has selected his favorite Instagram post as well.

Craig Silva:

Yes. So you have a pinned post that sticks to the top of your Instagram that is Oprah coming around a corner and you’re coming out of, I don’t know if it’s a green room or whatever, and you’re just put your hands up like this, and you have just this beautiful moment together, and she’s holding your book in her hand, and we watched this video. Here’s a screenshot if you need a reminder.

Abraham Verghese:

Yes, yes indeed.

Craig Silva:

We watched this screenshot a few times, or we watched this video a few times and loved it. I just want to know what that experience was like. I think the caption on it says, “I won’t forget this moment.”

Abraham Verghese:

Yeah, I mean, I think the most unforgettable moment was perhaps when she called me, it took her about 10 minutes to convince me that she was really who she was, because for some reason, with this book Covenant, I had not thought about her, because with the previous book, Cutting For Stone Set in Africa, and with issues about fistula in women and the female circumcision, I had always thought that was a natural for her. I prayed for her to pick that book. I lit a candle for it. And with this book, I thought, there’s this no way. And I wound up telling her that story on the phone call, and she said, “Well, God’s time is not our time. That candle you lit worked, but it was for this book.”

Karen Farmer:

Oh my gosh.

Abraham Verghese:

So I think I’m in awe of her, because I’ve lived in San Antonio, El Paso, Iowa City, Boston, Johnson City, Tennessee, and I’ve met people who I would not call readers, but they’ve read every single one of the books that she has picked, because of their passion for her. So how can you not be in awe of someone who’s brought so many people to this thing that I love, which is reading and writing? So after having that intense conversation with her, and I think one more conversation perhaps, the moment of meeting her was a bit unreal to me.

And it turned out that she had been deeply moved by this book. She picks a book and that’s magic for a book, but nobody had anticipated the degree of her passion and enthusiasm for this book, which resulted in the book being unavailable on bookstores for the first week or so, because we never anticipated quite that much of a demand. So she’s been a true angel in my life, and that moment of first setting eyes on her after a month of knowing that I was the pick, and some communications back and forth, it was just very, very special. Unforgettable.

Craig Silva:

That’s amazing.

Karen Farmer:

Well, we have one last question for you before we let you go. We were wondering if you have any books you’re currently reading or enjoying that you would like to recommend to us or to our listeners to check out?

Abraham Verghese:

Well, I’m listening to Tom Lake, which is being narrated by Meryl Streep. And I must say that I really love listening to audiobooks, so I sort of found myself revisiting certain books of my youth and having a completely different take on them. But anyway, I’m enjoying Tom Lake enormously. Before that, I just finished The Brothers Karamazov. Again, one of those ponderous books to read, but as an audiobook, my goodness. There were sections that a good editor should have cut, but it was the most wild dreamlike state that I had been in for weeks of listening to that.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, how long is that audiobook? I’m curious.

Abraham Verghese:

If you think my book is long, I think that’s much, much longer.

Craig Silva:

That poor narrator.

Abraham Verghese:

But I experienced something that Oprah said about my book with that book, which is she said that at one point she looked to see how many pages were left, not to get it over with, but because she didn’t want it to end. And with The Brothers Karamazov I had from time to time, I would look to see how many hours left and was disappointed when that number was now in single digits.

Karen Farmer:

Oh no, yep. I absolutely know that moment. I also saw a picture of, I think, do you have a pug? Is that right? I think it was your dog on the couch with the earbuds in listening to your audiobook, and I loved that audiobook moment.

Abraham Verghese:

No, actually I travel too much to have a pet myself. So I have these vicarious adopted pets in the neighborhood and of friends, and so someone sent me a picture, one of the dog with my book.

Karen Farmer:

I love that.

Abraham Verghese:

And then that started a thing. So if you look on Instagram, you’ll see at least 15 different cats and dogs having debates about my book, which I love. I want to keep that going.

Karen Farmer:

I have two cats, so I’ll take one and send it to you when I get back.

Abraham Verghese:

Would you do that?

Karen Farmer:

Yes, I absolutely will.

Abraham Verghese:

Promise, okay.

Craig Silva:

Thank you so much for your time. We know you have a million things going on, so we really appreciate this conversation. It’s been so nice to meet you, and get to hear about your work and your process.

Abraham Verghese:

It’s my pleasure. You guys have done so much for audiobooks and I’m just so delighted to be part of this. Thank you.

Craig Silva:

Thank you so much. Well, thank you for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the interview. As we do at the end of every episode, Karen and I are going to talk about what we are reading and then talk about some upcoming episodes we have coming out soon. So Karen, it is that time of the podcast for you to pretend to act surprised when I say, what are you reading right now?

Karen Farmer:

I would love to tell you, thank you so much for asking. I just finished what I think will undoubtedly be one of my favorite books that I read this year, and it’s-

Craig Silva:

Oh damn.

Karen Farmer:

… January. The bar has been set for everyone. I just finished Disorientation by Elaine Shea Chow. I have had this book on my shelf in my TBR for quite some time. I got it in Seattle when the Libro.fm team went to an offsite, and I had just gotten over having COVID, and had no energies, but I rallied. I came to the bookstore, I got this book. I’ve been saving it, because I knew I was going to love it and I did. I loved it so much.

It is about a young woman named Ingrid who is a PhD student. She is writing her dissertation on the most famous of all time Chinese-American poet, and she is led through this campus mystery, through the archives of the library, uncovering who this poet actually is, and it is chaotic. It is funny, it is completely unexpected. If you like a campus novel, you will love this. If you love a little bit of light sleuthing, you will love this. If you love satire, you will absolutely love this. It just checked all of the boxes for me. It was one of those books that just felt, two pages in, like it was written for me. I’m like, yes, this is it.

Craig Silva:

The second you were like, “It was writing about a poet. It has light sleuthing.” I was like, what? How did you sit on this book for so long?

Karen Farmer:

It’s fantastic. It is absolutely fantastic. And the audiobook is amazing as well. I read the audio and the paper book. The narrator’s name is Jennifer Kim, and she is absolutely fantastic. It’s a very long book for the most part, and I just really fell in love with her voice. And when I looked her up, I realized that she had narrated a bunch of other big deal books. She narrated Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. You may have heard of that one, amongst others. There are Lady Tan Circle of Women, Miracle Creek by Angie Kim, this narrator is absolutely amazing. So highly recommend checking this out.

Craig Silva:

Sounds amazing. I’ve seen this book at the bookstore many a time, because I love the cover of it.

Karen Farmer:

Yes, the cover’s gorgeous.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, it’s amazing. So for folks, go look at the cover. This is a podcast and you can’t see it. So I’ve seen the cover a ton of times. I’ve seen the title obviously, because it’s on the cover, and this is not what I thought it would be about at all. So I’m really surprised and super intrigued, because I’ve heard you talk about many of book and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you quite as glowy as this.

Karen Farmer:

I love it. I love it. And I’ve got to say it’s one that I will reread, and I’m not a frequent rereader, but I will read this one again. I think there are clues and there are bits of nuance that I may not have…

Craig Silva:

So you would say that you want to go do some light sleuthing?

Karen Farmer:

Some light sleuthing, yes. What have you been reading?

Craig Silva:

What have I been reading? So I was recommended this book about a whale by one of my colleagues here at Libro. Her name is you, Karen. You said, “Go read this book.” In addition to you recommending it, my friend Steve glowed about this book when he read it. So between the two of you, I said, fine. I have no interest in reading a book about a man who is swallowed by a whale, but with your and Steve’s recommendation, I went to The Booksmith and grabbed it. I enjoyed this book. I don’t feel as glowy as you do about your book about this one, but it was definitely worth the read. It is unlike any other book that I have read. It is exactly what I said, it is the story of a young scuba diver being swallowed by a whale, and then being inside the whale, and writing about being in the whale in a very descriptive way. So if you are at all grossed out by the inside of a whale, do not read this book. If you-

Karen Farmer:

That’s a good warning.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, it’s a lot. But in addition to being a story about being eaten by a whale, it is about his relationship to his recently past father, and his growing up with him in a family full of women. He has two sisters and his mom, and his dad treated him very differently, and it’s a lot about family dynamics, and grief, and loss, and it’s told through a series of flashbacks. When you’re inside of a whale, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your life, obviously.

Karen Farmer:

I would imagine so.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. So it’s good and it’s pretty short, and it’s very page turnery. Each chapter is two pages long. You were ripping through chapters and I think I like, it had this real, you can see this being a movie, it had this real sense of the time ticking, because each chapter name is the amount of air he has left in his tank. So quite good. Go grab Whalefall by Daniel Krauss. Do I have time for one more? I’ll be quick.

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely.

Craig Silva:

I am about 75% of the way through a book called The Fetishist, a novel by the late Katherine Min. This book is amazing so far. Like I said, I’m about 75% of the way through and it has an introduction that’s really beautiful and tells kind of the story that she wrote this book in 2014, finished it right around the time she got a diagnosis of breast cancer. And she put the book in a drawer, and she really started writing a lot of essays, and shorter stories, et cetera. And then she passed away in 2019, and her daughter found the manuscript on a computer, and it had a note attached to it. I don’t want to ruin it, go buy this book. But it had a note attached to it. And here we are. It’s 2024. This book was released on January 9th, I believe, so just like a week ago.

So it sat in a drawer from 2014 to 2019. Then it’s been going through the process and now it’s out. It’s amazing. I won’t get too much into the synopsis, but it’s told through multiple characters, Daniel, who is the fetishist, multiple women that he’s kind of fallen in love with, or fetishized as well, and the daughter of one of them who’s out for revenge. And anyway, it’s so good. I don’t know how it ends yet, but I am dying to be done recording this podcast so I can hopefully finish this tonight. As much as I love recording this podcast, I’m dying to pick up this book again.

Karen Farmer:

I am so sold. I keep saying I’m not buying any more books. I have to read everything on my shelves that I haven’t read yet, and that is a failed attempt. I am going to go buy this as soon as possible.

Craig Silva:

It’s good. And one of the main characters is like, she’s in a punk rock band and yeah, you’ll love it.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, I’m in. I love it.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, you’re going to love it.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you so much for recommending this title. I will be getting it. Are we allowed to talk about Cincinnati?

Craig Silva:

I guess we are since you just said it. So as some of you may know, we have recorded a bunch of podcasts with amazing authors in Austin that we’re still editing and there’s more of those to come out. But like Karen said, we’re heading to Cincinnati. What are we going to do there, Karen?

Karen Farmer:

Well, we will be at the Winter Institute, and I’m very excited because I am from Cincinnati. That is the place of my origin, and we’re going to be interviewing whoever will talk to us. And by that I mean we have some really incredible people lined up that we’ll be speaking to. So stay tuned for that. We’re going to spend, I think three days just talking to all of these epic authors, so couldn’t be more excited to bring that to you all.

Craig Silva:

As difficult as the in-person interviews are even just technically, I really prefer it. I like that it’s kind of becoming our thing now, to go to these conferences and actually do these in person. It’s just such a different experience from Zoom. So very, very exciting. If you like what you just heard on this episode, please subscribe to the podcast. If you already subscribe, but have not rated the podcast, please do so. It helps us.

Karen Farmer:

If you’re not a Libro.fm member yet, and you would like to try it out, you can use our code and you will get two audiobooks instead of just one for your first month of membership. So you could get Whalefall, you could get The Fetishist. I think you should get Disorientation by Elaine Shea Chow, but I’m biased, because I loved it. Anyway, as always, thank you for listening.