We have reviewed some of Michael’s earlier works. (See the earlier reviews of The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost and Divisadero for details). But this book fundamentally is different from the others. The others are fiction – though with his style and penchant for complex formulation and narration, even his fiction is different from other authors – but this is simply a memoir of his early life in Sri Lanka.
It is interesting in parts. He uses the point where he returns to Sri Lanka with his family to revisit his early days as a vehicle for his memories. And his family certainly seems to have been colourful!
His dad seems to have been a wild spirit. Goes off and gets himself engaged to his sister’s best friend. Though unexpected, family welcomes it and then he goes off on another trip and comes back with a wife. No word to the fiancée who may be waiting!
Even after this marriage, he seems to have no intent to contact his earlier betrothed either, leaving the family to do damage control. As if all this is not enough excitement, he then goes off and enrols in Ceylon army suddenly. There has been no warning, no indication earlier to anyone.
In addition to being impulsive and wild, he also seems to have been irresponsible. He does not have a job, and on the occasions when he is forced to find one, does not keep it for long.
The family is a mix of Dutch and Sri Lankan blood and many of them seem to live a highly anglicized life in what was then Ceylon. Western manners, pastimes, music, dress. Interesting. This explains his name and his native country of Sri Lanka.
His father has been a maverick all his life, selling off family property that is not even his (written in a will to his children by his father). There are also very interesting strands of the family story, for example the one about how the original Dutch Ondaatje married a Sinhalese girl; and how his grandfather, who was very dark skinned, was a tyrant in his own family, with a submissive fair skinned mother and lots of children.
The main problem is coherence. Many of the pieces are interesting and many are boring, but they all seem so disjointed. Add to that a jumble of rambling descriptions, (for instance discussions of the Sinhalese alphabet – why the letters are curved ) and a lot of poems, many of which are disjointed as well, and you seem to get lost along the way and wonder if it is really worth putting all that effort to finishing the book.
They are collections of poetic graffiti from an oppressed people who wrote it before perishing from being hemmed into a building by the army and obliterated completely.
Everything feels like reading someone’s disjointed diary entries, which it may have been, really.
There are other interesting pieces – for instance, the antics of his grandmother, a free spirit, refuses to compromise anything at all. Lives life on her own terms.
His dad is another lunatic who stops trains and fights with mom, another free spirit, when drunk. He made a train move back and forth, commandeering it, and created havoc.
Michael meets the (then) President, who, in the past, was struck senseless by his dad. They wander through the groves and the peacocks strutting nonchalantly inside the latter’s house.
Jumbled up narrations, confusing change of scenes, nothing major once you get past the eccentricity of the characters and the mix of Sinhalese and western genetic mix of the Ondaatjes. Reads like a family diary that you found lying around. Not up to the usual Ondaatje level you have come to expect.
I will award it a 3/10
– – Krishna
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