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Book Description 2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Michael Ondaatje"Michael Ondaatje is here at his agile and evocative best . . . Brightly colored, sweet and painful, bloody-midned and otherworldly, [Running in the Family] achieves the status of legend."
-Margaret Atwood In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka.Recording his journey through he druglike heat and intoxicating fragrances of the "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family.It is a story of broken engagements and drunken suicide attempts, of parties where exquisitely dressed couples tango in the jungle, a tale whose actors pursue lives of Baudelairean excess with impeccable decorum. Lyrical and witty, tragic and deliriously romantic, Running in the family is an inspired marriage of travel narrative andfamily memoir by one of our most eloquent and poetic writers.
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magical realist sensual family saga
Running in the Family is a wonderful autobiography, in the magical-realist, crazy-family-saga vein of Garcia-Marquez or Rushdie. It's funny, poetic, sensual, moving and strongly evocative of Sri Lanka, the author's eccentric family, and the sultry damp tropical greenness. It took me until the middle of the book to really get into it, but then i couldn't stop, and i had to re-read the beginning again; there's something about the events and the time-cycle he's describing that throws you right into the middle of things at the beginning, and becomes more understandable and linear from the middle of the book onwards. But it's well worth any initial confusion, and if you loved the English Patient, this book is a must
For Those Who did not love "Anil's Ghost"
No author can make every book work. It's unfair to expect that. This is the first Ondaajate book I read, make that: devoured. I loved the non-linearity, the depth of love for his home country, the characters gathering and separating. I write this review because I believe strongly that Anil's Ghost is the companion piece to "Running in the Family" and less well-done, less artful. But this book more than makes up for the flaws in the later book. Perhaps the kleig lights of fame are too hot for a writer to work at his best. I say that because the author of this book is so gifted and has so much to evoke that I expect he will do so again, maybe not in his beloved, insane Sri Lanka, or maybe back there again. So, in closing, If you despaired of loving "Anil's Ghost" read this and you're efforts will be fully redeemed.
Pictures of yesterday
Considering that this is in fact an autobiograpy, one can not judge it's contents. After all, you can not judge ones life, either you like it or not in a sense of discussing literature. But, what you can discuss is the manner in which that biography is written. Ondaatje present's life of his family trough generations who lived on Ceilon (Shri Lanka), in a series of random images, which are more like picture, than prose. Many times he stops to grasp certain individual and present his little history, his life, which than influenced the rest of the family in some perverse way. When reading this book, experienced reader will find such compositions that corresponds in that what crtics call 'modern', others will find interesting and compelling story, which never grows in boredom, with fluent narrative style that keeps ones eyes fixed on pages long after the lights went out.
Comparing the Ondaatje with other authors of the modern world,
Ondaatje lacks the one thing that he "must" have when presenting himself in a way he does. By focusing himself merely on a problems of his own, of a personal character in every (which, of course, includes this one)book, he voluntarily forgets that there is other life, other world going around him. When tending to write intelectual prose, one should, at least in one way, give some focus on that matter too.
But, when all this comes to conclusion, if you like (auto)biograhies - buy this one, if you don't, skip it. It's simple as that...
delicious
both the style and the subject of this novel are easy and enjoyable to absorb. mostly a memoir including some letters and poems. it has a great sense of humor and is full of passionate, and most importantly interesting accounts of the definatly NOT run of the mill family history Ondaatje has.
What a family!
This book was just so enjoyable and hilarious but yet so beautifully written. From the beginning till the end Ondaatje opens up to the reader (in a journal entry) this magical and beautiful world. Onddatje's adroitness to include the reader right there in the conversations he has with various family member will bring you to tears. His captivating sytle takes the reader back in time with him trhough such tear jerking and amusing experiences. This memoir will give you a deatiled verbalization of each city and place in Ceylon, so that the reader has a clear picture of what it was like to actually be there. His simple structure of setting things up, will make you feel the temperature and jungle like atmosphere by his entailed descriptions. Ondaatje reminds me of Stein in certain passages because of how he holds nothing back from the reader. It's as though he's sitting down and talking to you while showing photographs and stories of his exuberant and loud family.
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