Book 1 of 2 in Erandathie's reading course for me before I visit Sri Lanka.
In the acknowledgements, Ondaatje calls it 'not a history but a portrait or "gesture"', which is a good description of the book's tapestry of small pieces, weaving together the author's own voice - a composite of two journeys to Sri Lanka, in 1978 and 1980 - and those of many relatives, friends of the family and others, some of which could only have been nearly wholly, if judiciously, imagined, such as the wonderful extended bit that focuses on his grandmother Lalla through to her death by what was called in an earlier section 'natural causes', in a flood.
The bits that came most to life for me are those in which Ondaatje directly narrates his own experiences returning to the country from Canada, where he's made his home, and the 1920s/30s (jazz age!) vignettes in which his father, mother and associates - and, if I have the timing right, his free-spirited grandmother once liberated by the death of her patriarchal husband - live outrageously in their milieu of cross-country trains (literally: west coast Colombo to eastern Trincomalee features more than once), rubber estates, rest houses, colonial trappings, snakes and enormous flowering gardens. Very romantic.
In the acknowledgements, Ondaatje calls it 'not a history but a portrait or "gesture"', which is a good description of the book's tapestry of small pieces, weaving together the author's own voice - a composite of two journeys to Sri Lanka, in 1978 and 1980 - and those of many relatives, friends of the family and others, some of which could only have been nearly wholly, if judiciously, imagined, such as the wonderful extended bit that focuses on his grandmother Lalla through to her death by what was called in an earlier section 'natural causes', in a flood.
The bits that came most to life for me are those in which Ondaatje directly narrates his own experiences returning to the country from Canada, where he's made his home, and the 1920s/30s (jazz age!) vignettes in which his father, mother and associates - and, if I have the timing right, his free-spirited grandmother once liberated by the death of her patriarchal husband - live outrageously in their milieu of cross-country trains (literally: west coast Colombo to eastern Trincomalee features more than once), rubber estates, rest houses, colonial trappings, snakes and enormous flowering gardens. Very romantic.
