This book is a strange addition to the genre “memoir.” The author returns from Canada to the island of his birth, then known as Ceylon, to recapture as many fragments as he can of his parents from the memories of those who knew them. The harvest quickly turns phantasmagoric. I began to wonder if this was a novel but soon became convinced if Ondaatje were making this up, he would have been more restrained. I found myself believing these tales of the antics of his father, his mother, and especially his maternal grandmother Lalle, as well as the circle in which they moved, well-situated and star-crossed, suspended somewhere between European and native.
Then, when the book was nearly finished, Ondaatje lifts the veil. He writes something about his mother that seems the key to the entire book:
“She belonged to a type of Ceylonese family whose women would take the minutest reaction from another and blow it up into a tremendously exciting tale, then later use it as an example of someone’s strain of character. . . . An individual would be eternally remembered for one small act that in five years had become so magnified he was just a footnote below it” (p. 169).
As if a kaleidoscope had been turned, everything I had read in the book so far reconfigured itself. No, it was not fiction, nor was it fact, strictly speaking. It was history in the way that myth is history.
And what compelled Ondaatje to make two emotionally wrenching trips back to Sri Lanka to excavate the past? As he writes: “During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed. So our job becomes to keep peace with enemy camps, eliminate the chaos at the end of Jacobean tragedies, and with ‘the mercy of distance’ write the histories” (p. 179).
This book then fulfills a dual aim. We seek to understand ourselves in the process of dredging up the memory of those who sired, who bore us. At the same time, we fulfill the ancient duty to them that the Romans called pietas, which was not only reverence toward the gods but toward one’s family, one’s ancestors. The result, in this case, is a strangely affecting book. It took me by the hand to visit a distant island I’ve never been to. I was deep in it when I heard the news of the Easter bombs in Colombo, the craziness of the incidence in the book helping illuminate the madness of the act and vice versa, except that neither really explained the other. Instead, both took on the air of strands in the complex tapestry of life. Beautiful and sad.
Ondaatje crafts his prose with the care of language of an accomplished poet. Also, like the poet that he is, he doesn’t construct his account in a straight-forward way. Instead, he records a series of episodes whose effect builds in an evocative way. In that way, it is a prose evocation of memory, as once both insightful and untrustworthy. ( )

This was an easy, mostly pleasant look into Ondaatje's past and his family's past. It's a nice lyrical book, and I enjoyed it, though it's not something I'll remember much of beyond the fact of having read it. ( )

Well, I like reading Michael Ondaatje, I like his style and his flow. I found this quite mesmerising.

In some ways it reminded me of Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard in that it speaks of a world that is not only long gone but also about as far removed from most peoples' experience as you can get. It's a window into another person's life which is where it is different from his novels, this is about his childhood and how that world was in that unquestioning way that children have when they have nothin to compare it to.

Brilliant ( )

beautifully written ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was hooked from the start - Just could not put it down and cursed when I had to .... I loved the writing and the descriptions of the period and places, a time that no longer exists but full of fascinating detail that made you feel as though you were sitting there watching it all happen in front of you. The author is quite a story-teller. There were crazy, colourful and interesting characters in his family. I was in stitches at some of the antics that his father got up to and at the same time could not believe how he could have done some of the things he did!!! I also loved the photos that were included in the book. Looking forward to reading more from this author. ( )