Running in the Family
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Author: Michael Ondaatje
- Publisher: Vintage
- Release Date: November 1993
- ISBN-10: 0679746692
- ISBN-13: 9780679746690
- List Price: $14.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryIn the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India," Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Even Better Than The English Patient
Rating:
Ondaatje at his loftily lyrical, yet unpretentious best. An undoubted favorite among Canadian literary memoirs, this is the story of Michael Ondaatje's crazy family, who were among the ruling class in colonial Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. The writing is a beautiful spectacle but the content is highly personal, at times almost vulnerable for all the impenetrability of the prose.
Also the book is very funny. Ondaatje views his family as ridiculous and distances himself from them, but does so with an unmistakable love. Any scorn (a feeling anyone with a ridiculous family will find reflexive and familiar) seems squeezed out and we are left with a sense of reconciliation and the poetry of all things.
Tigers
Rating: 
The times in the recent past that we have read about Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the newspapers has concerned the Tamil Tigers who have finally been crushed and one wonders if they were fighting against a government controlled by Ondaatje-type people. The author's father was such a dedicated drunkard that its possible he actually was schizophrenic. I like the author best for his humorous detail but he never seems to get hold of a story too well and kind of staggers around with the shreds of it. At the end, I wondered was Doris his mother name or his stepmother's. Kudos to his mother for actually leaving his father and going to England where she earned her own living. The author doesn't think much of her but I do. What a brave woman. Is the author also a drunkard, I wonder?
A Favorite Memoir
Rating:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book for its exotic locale and irreverent description of the author's own family. In fact, it made me laugh out loud in places.
Irritating
Rating:
Ondaatje seems to be trying too hard. The language is overly flowery and the plot is often lost beneath the mound of words. It does have a few good moments, some funny, some touching. But in general, I spent most of this book irritated by the grandois manner of the author, as if by writing in a vague and pretty-fied manner, his words will sound important and deep.
Maybe it's just me, but I find that vague does NOT equal meaningful.
Remembering Family
Rating:
I read this book for a Canadian fiction class and really liked it. The language was so interesting and different from anything I had read before. It is a wonderful story about a wacky family. There are good times, bad times, funny stories, tragic stories, and just plain wacky events. It really makes you want to take a look into your own family and find out all of the "juicy" details. I really liked the book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting story.
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