The Covenant

The Covenant – James Michener

Several years ago I started this book and gave up after about 400 pages. I decided to try again.  I’m glad I did. Well, sort of. You really don’t know the definition of a “very long, detail packed” book until you’ve read a James Michener novel.  This one was one of his longest; 1,236 pages in paperback format.  These pages are incredibly dense with very small print.  A normal novel by, say a John Grisham or a Stephen King, has about half as much words on each page and they only clock in at about 400-500 pages total.  So what I’m essentially saying is that once I finished this book, I felt it was about twice as long as it actually appeared.  I almost wonder if this ‘story’ would have been better had the author divided it over about four or five volumes.  Think of John Jakes’ highly successful Kent Family Chronicles saga as an example.

James Michener’s typical work is to focus on a place, or rather the people that reside in the particular place.  This book was very typical of a James Michener novel in that it takes place over a few thousand years, and we move rather quickly through the centuries.  By the time we’re reading about the people and places on page 800, we’ve almost forgotten about the distant relatives on page 300 and their escapades that took place several hundred years prior.  It must be said that this, and most of Michener’s work really is great reading, it just tends to overwhelm.  We feel accomplished as a reader when we finally arrive at, say, page 900, but then we internally groan when we realize we still have about 350 pages to go.

The setting for this novel is South Africa. The time ranges from pre-historic to present day (1980) when apartheid was raging through the nation, and there were very small glimmers of hope within the air for change.  So yes, most of the stories within this novel aren’t particular happy ones, but this is par for the course for Michener.  The title of the book “The Covenant” comes from the Dutch people called Afrikaners and a “covenant” they make with God sometime in the 17^th or 18^th century.  These people make a habit of quoting the Bible at every opportunity yet only pick and choose the parts of it that they find beneficial towards them.  They state quite often that they are “Old Testament” people and believe that the descendants of Ham (native Africans) have been forced by God to live in infinite servitude to their superior white brethren.  But God doesn’t go for covenants that are dictated to him. Especially when the terms of said covenant goes against His basic teaching on how one race treats another whom He loves equally.  It’s this conflict that essentially shapes the entire narrative within this book.

This book is filled with different families, races, and cultures.  From the various indigenous tribes to the various invaders from France, Holland, and England.  The tensions are at their worst amongst the different races; including “The Coloured” which is essentially mixed offspring of the white and black.  Not surprisingly, the book becomes the hardest to stomach during the last couple hundred pages when apartheid was in full swing.  One almost wishes that the book had been written a couple of decades later so we could read about the badly need changes initiated by F.W. De Klerk and Nelson Mandela.  Author James Michener sprinkles real figures sporadically within the pages, but these two are never mentioned.

Overall, Michener succeeds in telling a wonderful story while giving his readers a very intense history lesson as well.  I’ve felt the same after finishing the bulk of Michener’s “Places” novels.  In that sense it’s very rewarding.  One wishes, though, that he could have shaved a couple hundred pages off his finished  work, however.  To be honest, there were many times within the last 150 pages or so where I simply skimmed the material. It was a tad much.  Even if you don’t ‘like’ these types of books, you can’t help but admire the author’s tenacity where research is needed.  I would think writing a tome such as this would require a lifetime of examination.  Pretty impressive considering that this volume was only one of many by this author.  Still, though, it WAS one of his longest, and I was mostly relieved when I finally finished it despite its overall rewards.