Anil's Ghost

I am a big fan of Jean Giono’s work. Yet I can readily understand that he speaks to me in a way that may not resonate with others in the least; I can understand that someone else might be baffled and simply not “get” why I am so enamored of Giono. I suspect that the same is true of Ondaatje and that people are either fans or simply do not understand the attraction. I was looking at the reviews of this work on Goodreads and found a sentence that I think applies not only to this novel but to all of the Ondaatje books I have read so far. The reviewer noted that some people found Anil’s Ghost to be “composed of fragments. I would rather say it is composed of silences between them.” So much of what is moving about Ondaatje’s show more work is about the silences. To be sure, he is a master stylist; his writing is lyrical, limpid, and so many other adjectives I could select. And that is a great attraction. But even more, his stories exist in the silences, the unspoken, the unsaid.
To the extent you need to know what the “story” is about: an expatriate forensic pathologist returns to Sri Lanka after an absence of fifteen years. She has been sent by an international human rights group and the plot, such as it is, revolves around her work with a government archaeologist to identify the bones of the victims of that country’s long-running civil war. Who can be trusted, who can’t, and why. But the plot, as intriguing and illuminating as it is—Ondaatje chooses it, I think, to offer himself a platform for his thoughts on the civil war (which are worth reading)—is only a means to an end and that end is Ondaatje’s ruminations. Read this book. It’s not his best but increasingly I find myself coming to the conclusion that he hasn’t written anything that isn’t worth your time. show less

Anil is a forensic pathologist, who returns to Sri Lanka, the country where she grew up, to take part in a UN investigation of human rights abuses during the recent (and still ongoing) civil wars. Together with archaeologist Sarath, his surgeon brother Gamini, and the artist Ananda, she pieces together the history of a recent skeleton that has anomalously turned up in an archaeological site from a much older period.

This is a book full of fascinating and often horrifying details about the consequences of communal violence, with some really beautiful writing that sticks in the mind, but it's also a very discursive kind of a book, constantly shying away from anything that looks like a neatly-resolved plot, something Ondaatje clearly felt show more would be inappropriate in this kind of context. As a result, there are all kinds of side-tracks that tell us fascinating things about the lives of forensic pathologists or plumbago miners, but don't necessarily deepen our understanding of the characters and their story. In a less-distinguished writer you'd call this "research dumping".

I think the focus on the technical aspects of what extreme violence does to human bodies works against the book as well: we end up with a striking, but very generic, picture of communal violence that doesn't have much to tie it to the specific Sri Lankan setting. Also, it gives a lot of weight to scientific details that Ondaatje isn't necessarily very competent to work with on his own: There were a couple of unimportant but conspicuous errors in technical terms that made it apparent that he hadn't run the final text past his expert advisors (e.g. "microtone" for "microtome", and "millimetres" for "millilitres" — those could have been dictation mistakes). show less

Anil is a forensic anthropologist who has returned to her native Sri Lanka as a representative of an international human rights organization. She works with archeologist Sarath as they attempt to identify a skeleton that they believe is a victim of atrocities committed by the government during the civil war. The storyline follows the pair’s journey toward identifying the victim, while flashing back to provide their personal histories. Sarath knows there is danger in pursuing identification, but Anil sees it as an opportunity to expose the truth to the world. They enlist help from Sarath’s brother, Gamini, a doctor who has treated civilians caught in the crossfire.

The writing is top rate. There are scenes of beauty as well as show more brutality. A number of storylines occur simultaneously, and they are seamlessly interwoven. We learn about archeology, forensic pathology, and medical practices used to treat victims of the civil war. We come to understand the different factions involved. Conflict is introduced in the interactions between Anil and Sarath. Anil does not entirely trust Sarath since he is a related to a government official. The tension builds in the second half, and the climactic scene is both unexpected and intense.

4.5 show less

Anil Tissera has returned to her native Sri Lanka as a pathologist for an international human rights organization to investigate deaths of Sri Lankans in the civil war of the 1990s. She is assisted by Saratha, a local archaeologist and his brother, an emergency physician. It's a subtle story that is not so much about the war, but quietly entangled with the passions and loyalties of the people. There are myriad tragedies to be faced beyond the allegations. As anyone from a country that has experienced civil war can attest, understanding the allegiance of those around you is paramount. Anil's colleagues are complex, shadowy, careful, only to be expected in the circumstances, but Ondaatje gives them a remarkable verisimilitude.

Because so show more much of what has happened in the war reflects national identity, Anil's forensic investigation is as much a probe into Sri Lanka's culture, people and history as of the civil war victims. This is a quiet telling, an elegy set against the sad backdrop of Sri Lanka's civil war and veiled in the surreal, dreamlike quality of Ontaatje's prose that captures the beauty and atmosphere of the country. show less

Ondaatje's haunting prose is ideally suited to such a story as this, where civil war and fear have torn at a country and created a world that can be as surreal and beautiful as it is cruel.

At the center is Anil, a forensic anthropologist who was born in Sri Lanka, and who has come back unrooted and free under the direction of a human rights organization, though identity and connection are at the center of what she does. Through her, through a doctor, and through others--all of whom are affected and affecting--Ondaatje stages a world to be sunken into and explored, through visceral and careful writing that is, simply, worth reading and re-reading.

Simply, I don't know of any other writer like Ondaatje, and I don't know that this book show more could be forgotten, once read. And it should be read. show less

Michael Ondaatje transports us and his heroine Anil into war tormn Sri lanka with powerful and lyrical writing. The book is often described as dense, but this is misleading. There is nothing dense about the beautiful open and flowing prose style. Yes there are layers of meaning within the story, but there are in most good novels. While the book focuses on the three main all to human characters of the brothers Sarath and Gamini and the returning emigre Anil, It is when their lives intersect with the mystical epigraphist Palipana and the eye painter Ananda Udugama that the lyricism of the writing soars to new heights. The book does not shrink from the horrors of population caught in the horrors of a war zone, but much of this is seen show more through the exhausted and drug influenced eyes of the surgeon Gamini and so much of this has a slightly dazed feel about it. The book describes how the lives of so many innocent poeople are shattered or twisted horribly out of shape by modern warfare. There are many sections of this book that stay in the memory and individual sentances like when describing the exhaustion of hospital work -
"The boundry between sleep and waking was a cotton thread so faintly coloured he crossed it unawares"

There are many keen observations and reflections that hit home in this book, but for me the idea of a war culture that alienates people from beauty and truth is the one that stays with me. Highly recommended show less

I tore through this book, devouring it in relief at having something so excellent to read. It's an extraordinary picture of life in Sri Lanka during the Civil War and the horrific impact of indiscriminate violence on ordinary people.