☆☆☆ 3 stars

so i was assigned this book by my HL lit teacher as a summer reading book and it's a bit of a mixed bag for me which is exactly why i gave it 3 stars. it's a really easy read and even has a few pictures in it to help you visualise more if you're into that. his writing style is lovely and poetic and he's amazing at painting a picture with words. his descriptions are so vivid and he creates this dreamy atmosphere that's hard to resist. it's as if you're right there in sri lanka, experiencing it all firsthand.

but one of the things that caused me to not give it higher than 3 stars was definitely the book's structure. it was kind of all over the place what with jumping around in time and switching perspectives a lot. sometimes it's a bit hard to keep track of what's going on. another downside is that the memoir lacks a clear narrative or central theme. it's like a bunch of anecdotes and memories thrown together without a strong thread to tie them all up. i found myself craving a more focused storyline or a deeper exploration of certain themes. it felt a bit scattered.

however, there are moments in the book that hit deep. ondaatje has this knack for mixing humor and introspection in a way that makes you stop and think. those parts resonated with me and gave me a glimpse into the complexities of family, identity, and life itself. all in all, "running in the family" is a book with its ups and downs. if you're into poetic prose and don't mind a non-linear narrative, you might appreciate ondaatje's artistic style. just be prepared for a bit of a wild ride with no clear destination. it's worth checking out if you're curious, but don't expect a straightforward memoir.

Another piece that I was required to read for my advanced nonfiction writing class. It was very different from the others (Maya Angelou and Geoffrey Wolff) in topic, writing style, and flow.

Running in the Family was difficult to read and dive into, at first. The writing style is disjointed and the timeline of the narrative jumbles and hops around. Within each section of chapters, the paragraph could begin with a story about the narrator's grandmother, and end with paddies and riding on trains. However, after reading for a few hours and sinking into the rhythm of the text, I began to notice a pattern to the prose, poetry, dialogue, and photographs.

In order to me to understand this memoir, I pretended the narrator was a friend of mine, sharing a scrapbook of his family and telling stories about each photograph. Beautiful prose would describe the landscape of Sri Lanka, then memories of a family member and their adventures in Sri Lanka would spark, and from those stories a narrative about an adventure in England would branch. When I approached the memoir in this fashion, it was much easier to follow and discover the links from one family member to the next - and finally to the story of the narrator's mother and father.

Another aspect of this memoir that is worth noting: while Wolff and Angelou repeatedly reminded the readers of their cultural background, their race, their history, Ondaatje's identity was mixed. This colonial interpretation was so intricately woven that his own racial and cultural identity was vague. I understood that he was Dutch, but there were so many English, Canadian, and American ties within the Sri Lanka life that understanding Ondaatje's identity and the identity of his family members became blurred. The jury's still out figuring out if I liked that or not.

It was a good read, a bit difficult, but I do not think I'll pick this book up again.

To what extent do the most colourful anecdotes about a person define that person's personality? In my family the most enigmatic character was my maternal grandfather. The anecdote most often brought up to describe him was the night he organised a mass break out from the nursing home where he had been placed after another calamitous drunken night when he had done himself damage. His escape party was eventually captured three miles from the home. They were all sitting by the sea. Thinking about it, I'd have to say it's an anecdote that so well defines him that I almost suspect it might have been made up. It would appear that if we want to be remembered fondly the onus is on us to provide a couple of colourful anecdotes. The rest of one's life doesn't matter much!
Ondaatje's memoir about his family is essentially an album of anecdotes. He looks for the actions that seem to define the secret spring of an individual's identity. Perhaps this is what an anecdote is - a moment when a person takes off the social mask and acts from the core of his or her being. In The Waves Virginia Woolf's interpretation of key anecdotes for her characters were all of an intensely private and hidden nature. I suspect Woolf here hit on a fundamental truth about the secret springs of identity denied to conventional biographers. Ondaatje's notion of anecdote is of this conventional nature. He centres on the entertaining, the tragicomic, on what makes good dining room conversation.

Perhaps a prerequisite for being a brilliant writer is to possess an enigmatic family. Chabon's Moonglow was fuelled by a splendidly enigmatic grandfather and this is given much of its narrative drive by a fabulous grandmother and a tragicomic over exuberant father. Add to that the landscape and animals of Ceylon.

There's always an enchanting and exhilarating freshness about Ondaatje's writing like seeing a familiar vista under a fresh fall of snow.

“You must get this book right,” my brother tells me, “You can only write it once.” But the book again is incomplete. In the end all your children move around the scattered acts and memories with no more clues. Not that we thought that we would ever be able to fully understand you. Love is often enough, in your stadium of small things.”
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Michael Ondaatje was eleven years old when he left Sri Lanka for an English boarding school. In Running in the Family, he returns as an adult to try and learn about the extended family he left behind. The book combines pieces of prose and poetry to form a partially fictionalised, dream-like picture of Sri Lanka weaving between time, place and person. Ondaatje’s family offers up an incredible cast of characters; Bampa who would visit England to dance and buy crystal, his grandmother Lalla who “died in the arms of a blue jacaranda” and could persuade anyone into chaos and his father who had bouts of dipsomania. The only omission for me was a sense of how his family had shaped Ondaatje himself, but he creates such an evocative sense of Sri Lanka and his heritage that that was mere detail. A beautiful book that I will return to again.

I felt like I was sitting with the author and his family meandering through stories and piecing together his family history. The heady 20's, the depression and beyond through all the highs and lows. It had laugh out loud moments but also a sense of sadness brought about by the destructive repercussions of alcoholism. I particularly enjoyed the story about cobras and ping pong balls.

Pure poetry, beautiful writing, hilarious stories it’s hard to believe it’s not fiction. This is also the perfect book to read if you’re going to Sri Lanka.

Another non-linear narrative here, a memoir that uses "memory" as an organizing structure (not forward action). The author mines memory: not only his own. I enjoyed it. Lots of beautiful sentences. Lots of metaphors. Lots of descriptions I wish I had written.

I keep counting the children, keep feeling I am missing one.

I am the foreigner. I am the prodigal who hates the foreigner.

Sweat runs with its own tangible life down a body as if a giant egg has been broken onto our shoulders.

We own the country we grow up in.

I am the son you have made hazardous.

Really interesting to read about the not so distant history of Sri Lanka through eyes of another ethnic minority.

I found this to be a jumbled, incohesive mess of a memoir. There was too much unnecessary imagery at certain parts, and then not enough detail at all in others. If you held a gun to my head and asked what the point of this book was, then I would ask you to tell my cat I love him and pull the trigger.

I think part of the reason why I disliked this book was because it was required reading for school. Especially with a memoir, I was unable to connect with the stories because I did not care about the author's life; a memoir is only impactful if a reader actively chooses to read it. I did like some of the poems in this memoir, such as the one about the cinnamon's peeler's wife. Other than that, most of the book fell flat to me.

One Quote I Liked:

"And so its name changed, as well as its shape, -- Serendip, Ratnapida ("island of the gems"), Taprobane, Zeloan, Zeilan, Seyllan, Ceilon, and Ceylon -- the wife of many marriages, courted by invaders who stepped ashore and claimed everything with the power of their sword or bible or language."

What a nice break from reading so many fiction books! This lyrical memoir of Michael Ondaatje is a must read of those who read and did not like his Booker-award winning novel The English Patient. In this book, I agree with Margaret Atwood said that he (Mr. Ondaatje) is at his agile and evocative best. This book is brightly colored, sweet and painful and legend-like. If you still doubt that Mr. Ondaatje is a gifted writer, read this memoir. Reading him here is akin to St. Thomas touching the Holy Wound. You will believe that the guy is worthy of winning that Booker prize. He has THAT talent.

In the past couple of years, I read a handful of beautiful memoirs by well-known novelists. I enjoyed Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes for its funny innocent yet tragic story. I admired Vladimir Nabokov's Speak Memory for its elegant and clear prose. I laughed a number of times reading the funny anecdotes of Roald Dahl in his childhood memoir, Boy. The newspaper man, Howard Griffin gave a new perspective on the life of a white man pretending to be black in Black Like Me. Lastly, I laughed and cried reading The Invisible Wall by Harry Bestein for the tragic story between two people so in-love but happened to be of different religions.

It's just that Anne Frank is not a novelist but The Diary of a Young Girl rules when it comes to how powerful a memoir could be from generations to generations.

They say that each of us must accomplish only 3 things before we die: have a child, plant a tree and write a book.

I have a daughter. I planted many coconut trees when I was growing up in the province. Only the book is missing. It can only be a memoir.

And it has be something similar to what Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family for a number of reasons:

1) The setting is Asia - Sri Lanka (also known before as Ceylon). The tropical backdrop, beautifully captured by Mr. Ondaatje in his lyrical prose. The memories of waking up in the fresh morning air surrounded by coconut and other trees during my summer breaks spent in our barrio rushed back to me while reading this book.

2) The tale of an exotic island, family, truth, memory and legend are wonderfully woven together. I just could not help comparing this to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Ondaatjes's clan in the 50's to 70's life in Sri Lanka is similar to what the Buendia's clan lived in Macondo. Just like in One Hundred, Running in the Family again proves that the influences of our great-great grandparents are still with us even if we did not meet or see them. There are just things that got passed on to us whether we like them or not.

3) How fathers, no matter how distant they could be at times, influence their children. This is a big nice read for the coming Father's Day. The relationship of Michael and Mervyn Ondaatje seems to be so honest even if it is devoid of an drama. There is a part in the book that I liked so much that I read it three times:

"Two days before he died we were together. We were alone in the house. I can't remember what we said but we sat there for three hours. I too don't talk too much. You know it is a most relaxed thing when you sit with a best friend and you know there is nothing you have to tell him, to empty your mind. We just stayed there together, silent in the dusk like this, and we were quite happy."

Oh God, I miss my dad.

***Some may say that this review contains spoilers but since nothing really happened in this book (wait, was that a "spoiler"?) it is hard to say what a "spoiler" for this book is.



Ok. ok. I get it. Your dad was a drunk. But remember when he did that really funny thing? or not? Remember when he was so kind? or when he wasn't? Remember how intelligent he was? Or that really dumb thing he did? How horrible. How wonderful!

Ok. ok. I get it. Your mom is amazing. Except when she did that not so amazing thing. But really, she's a saint. Except when she wasn't.

Ok. ok. I get it. Sri Lanka is beautiful and full of wonderful people. Or at least that is what you keep telling me. It is really hard for me to tell because I don't know any of these people and I wasn't allowed to get to know them through your writing.



It is apparent that Mr. Ondaatje is an amazing writer (except for commas- He apparently hates them. I'm not an English major either but Mr. Ondaatje has an editor). He writes beautifully about his topics, using amazing metaphors and descriptive, lyrical prose. His poems are amazing and beautiful. But what isn't apparent is why I would want to read a personal memoir that was so personal that I was lost throughout much of it. Who was this person again? How did they connect to the story? The memories are written in brief synopsis (synopsi?, synopsises?) that jump from here to there and back again.

It appears that the journey the author wants to take us on is not really our journey to take but more so his and he is forced to share it with us. Well, I for one am disappointed in that journey.

This is the great writer's ode to his ancestry and the land he came from, and it's a gorgeous, sweaty, and painful book: Nostalgia made beautiful by ridiculously evocative writing. There's just so much in there, but the book can also be read as a Ondaatje's attempt to make peace with immense loss, that of his family. A good amount of Ceylon history walk in and out of the pages, and the characters walk straight into our hearts, especially the author's haunted, hilarious father. Wonderful book.