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Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario, a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs pushes Michael Ondaatje to travel back home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Along with his siblings and children, Ondaatje gathers rumours, anecdotes, poems, records and memories to piece together this fragmented portrayal of his family's past, his father's destructive alcoholism and the colourful stories and secrets of show more ancestors both disgraced and adored throughout centuries of Sri Lankan society. In an exotic, evocative portrait of the heat, wildlife, sounds and silences of the Sri Lankan landscape, Ondaatje combines vivid recreations of a privileged, eccentric older generation with a deeply personal reconciliatory journey in which he explores his own ghosts, and how his family's extraordinary history continues to influence his life. show lessTags
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Member Recommendations
wandering_star Both these are family memoirs with a light-hearted tone, although Out Of Egypt has a rather more sombre background setting.
Nickelini Both books tell stories of upper class Sri Lankan families, and both are lovely.
Member Reviews
This book is a strange addition to the genre “memoir.” The author returns from Canada to the island of his birth, then known as Ceylon, to recapture as many fragments as he can of his parents from the memories of those who knew them. The harvest quickly turns phantasmagoric. I began to wonder if this was a novel but soon became convinced if Ondaatje were making this up, he would have been more restrained. I found myself believing these tales of the antics of his father, his mother, and especially his maternal grandmother Lalle, as well as the circle in which they moved, well-situated and star-crossed, suspended somewhere between European and native.
Then, when the book was nearly finished, Ondaatje lifts the veil. He writes something show more about his mother that seems the key to the entire book:
“She belonged to a type of Ceylonese family whose women would take the minutest reaction from another and blow it up into a tremendously exciting tale, then later use it as an example of someone’s strain of character. . . . An individual would be eternally remembered for one small act that in five years had become so magnified he was just a footnote below it” (p. 169).
As if a kaleidoscope had been turned, everything I had read in the book so far reconfigured itself. No, it was not fiction, nor was it fact, strictly speaking. It was history in the way that myth is history.
And what compelled Ondaatje to make two emotionally wrenching trips back to Sri Lanka to excavate the past? As he writes: “During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed. So our job becomes to keep peace with enemy camps, eliminate the chaos at the end of Jacobean tragedies, and with ‘the mercy of distance’ write the histories” (p. 179).
This book then fulfills a dual aim. We seek to understand ourselves in the process of dredging up the memory of those who sired, who bore us. At the same time, we fulfill the ancient duty to them that the Romans called pietas, which was not only reverence toward the gods but toward one’s family, one’s ancestors. The result, in this case, is a strangely affecting book. It took me by the hand to visit a distant island I’ve never been to. I was deep in it when I heard the news of the Easter bombs in Colombo, the craziness of the incidence in the book helping illuminate the madness of the act and vice versa, except that neither really explained the other. Instead, both took on the air of strands in the complex tapestry of life. Beautiful and sad.
Ondaatje crafts his prose with the care of language of an accomplished poet. Also, like the poet that he is, he doesn’t construct his account in a straight-forward way. Instead, he records a series of episodes whose effect builds in an evocative way. In that way, it is a prose evocation of memory, as once both insightful and untrustworthy. show less
Then, when the book was nearly finished, Ondaatje lifts the veil. He writes something show more about his mother that seems the key to the entire book:
“She belonged to a type of Ceylonese family whose women would take the minutest reaction from another and blow it up into a tremendously exciting tale, then later use it as an example of someone’s strain of character. . . . An individual would be eternally remembered for one small act that in five years had become so magnified he was just a footnote below it” (p. 169).
As if a kaleidoscope had been turned, everything I had read in the book so far reconfigured itself. No, it was not fiction, nor was it fact, strictly speaking. It was history in the way that myth is history.
And what compelled Ondaatje to make two emotionally wrenching trips back to Sri Lanka to excavate the past? As he writes: “During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed. So our job becomes to keep peace with enemy camps, eliminate the chaos at the end of Jacobean tragedies, and with ‘the mercy of distance’ write the histories” (p. 179).
This book then fulfills a dual aim. We seek to understand ourselves in the process of dredging up the memory of those who sired, who bore us. At the same time, we fulfill the ancient duty to them that the Romans called pietas, which was not only reverence toward the gods but toward one’s family, one’s ancestors. The result, in this case, is a strangely affecting book. It took me by the hand to visit a distant island I’ve never been to. I was deep in it when I heard the news of the Easter bombs in Colombo, the craziness of the incidence in the book helping illuminate the madness of the act and vice versa, except that neither really explained the other. Instead, both took on the air of strands in the complex tapestry of life. Beautiful and sad.
Ondaatje crafts his prose with the care of language of an accomplished poet. Also, like the poet that he is, he doesn’t construct his account in a straight-forward way. Instead, he records a series of episodes whose effect builds in an evocative way. In that way, it is a prose evocation of memory, as once both insightful and untrustworthy. show less
Elegant, multi-faceted account of returning to Sri Lanka and exploring his own and his relatives' memories of the life of a rackety, eccentric Ceylonese family in his parents' and grandparents' generation. As always with family memories, different people remember different things, and the picture doesn't quite add up: Ondaatje doesn't attempt to force it into artificial unity.
Ondaatje visited Sri Lanka at the end of the seventies, before the communal violence became serious, and he only refers very obliquely to the political problems of the island. They don't belong in this nostalgic account of how things were, but of course you can't read the book without keeping in mind the contrast between his idyllic picture of the thirties and show more forties and the grim reality of the eighties. show less
Ondaatje visited Sri Lanka at the end of the seventies, before the communal violence became serious, and he only refers very obliquely to the political problems of the island. They don't belong in this nostalgic account of how things were, but of course you can't read the book without keeping in mind the contrast between his idyllic picture of the thirties and show more forties and the grim reality of the eighties. show less
Oh, the fantasy twenties, the bravenewworld twenties, the isla formosa twenties. Just in case the seething exploitativeness and class privilege of it all wasn't up in your face enough in Gatsby, in Brideshead, Ondaatje slaps you in the face with it. This is a literal colony, and the drunkest idiot son is gonna pay for all those tripping gin walks down cinnamon-scented paths by being, like, a major in the Coldwater Guards and safely protecting Ceylon from the Japanese. Ondaatje makes no apologies for being a scion of privilege, and he gets away with it, because this world is that intoxicating. Because more than we want to condemn this world of laughter and mystery and affairs and the great chain of family ties and light-hearted laughter show more and cold-blooded savoir faire in the face of the fact that all that stops you from being a human stain is that you're beautiful--more than we want to condemn it, we want to experience it. We want to be the ones who lived fast and made this tiny land our own. We want to fly, tonight, and it's a lot more honest to make that flight a flood, like Ondaatje does for his batty grandma Lalla, and to have it end in crushing brutal death and not be the less wonderful for that than it is to cover up and make it Peter and Wendy and "there'll always be an England." There won't and there wasn't, and the same goes for planter Sri Lanka, but the difference is the bright young Ceylonese things knew it, and it redeems them a little and makes them a lot more doomed and desirable. A fantasy world; one that evaporates in peacock cries and dew. show less
Blurring the lines between memoir and fiction, Ondaatje's book recounts his experiences visiting Sri Lanka as he explores his family history in what was then known as Ceylon. With rich and lyrical descriptions of the country and his family, the book is beautiful to read. Ondaatje manages to capture the disjointed nature of oral narratives that often accompany explorations of family history. Filled with beautiful imaginings of events involving various family members, actually recountings from family and friends, and more reflective passages on his experiences and individuals he calls family. There are also a few photos included at the beginning of each section that serves to remind the reader that as much as the book pushes the boundary show more of fiction, these are still real individuals and events. Even the few poetry sections are beautiful, reflecting a country that is both Ondaatje's home and yet exotic at the same time. Evocative and a rich exploration of the many different stories that make up any family history, Ondaatje captures the fuzzy boundary of history and story. show less
Ondaatje’s prose is intensely evocative, impressionistic, magical writing. He writes of the smells and sounds of Ceylon, flowers that only bloom in the night, drunkenness, gambling and intoxicating love affairs. He writes of falling asleep in the afternoon, the curling beauty of the Sinhalese alphabet, the tree he climbed as a boy on his family’s estate. He writes about strange dreams, lizards, and crumbling rose palaces. This is a dream of a book, part poem, part family history. It represents to me all that is beautiful in language, in poetic imagery, and the construction of writing. His prose stuns me, it changes my feelings, the way I see the world and experience itself.
This book is described as being ‘postmodern’, an show more assessment I thoroughly agree with. One of the hallmarks of postmodernism, to my mind, is work that is self-referential. What I love about Ondaatje’s books is that he examines narrative structure. He did this beautifully in ‘Divisadero’ where the narrative resembles a sort of tree with each story growing out of the next; limb upon limb. In ‘Running in the Family’ he places fragments side by side; poems, dreams, memoirs, memories, impressions. The fragments then lift and form and create a whole in the mind. The past and present intermingle. It’s very beautiful. It’s the sort of writing that I am intensely interested in. Like all of Ondaatje’s books, this work is deeply intelligent, multi-layered, rich, and dripping in poetry. I read this book very slowly, drinking it in, I never wanted it to end. show less
This book is described as being ‘postmodern’, an show more assessment I thoroughly agree with. One of the hallmarks of postmodernism, to my mind, is work that is self-referential. What I love about Ondaatje’s books is that he examines narrative structure. He did this beautifully in ‘Divisadero’ where the narrative resembles a sort of tree with each story growing out of the next; limb upon limb. In ‘Running in the Family’ he places fragments side by side; poems, dreams, memoirs, memories, impressions. The fragments then lift and form and create a whole in the mind. The past and present intermingle. It’s very beautiful. It’s the sort of writing that I am intensely interested in. Like all of Ondaatje’s books, this work is deeply intelligent, multi-layered, rich, and dripping in poetry. I read this book very slowly, drinking it in, I never wanted it to end. show less
This is a poetic, lyrical book of memories and anecdotes about the author's aristocratic and eccentric Ceylonese-Dutch family. Like most family tales, some may have taken on a larger-than-life quality, with the basic story embellished in the retelling. My version is an audiobook with excellent narration by Ondaatje. His smooth, mellifluous voice conjures up the hot island of Sri Lanka, redolent with the scent of jasmine, and is perfect for this work. Fabulous!
sometimes when a poet writes prose it's amazing and perfect. parts of this book were that. other parts of the narration held me far less, so i found this a bit up and down and uneven. but the passages like "And a sourceless light that seems to brighten the landscape from underneath, as if yellow flowers in the garden are leaking into wet air." and "...slow air pinned down by rain" and the entire "Monsoon Notebook (i)" chapter make it so worth it. plus the actual poetry he puts in, especially the gorgeous "The Cinnamon Peeler" is reason enough to read this.
there were parts of this that i really loved. it made me want to reread the english patient because that entire book is written like this.
there were parts of this that i really loved. it made me want to reread the english patient because that entire book is written like this.
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Mittels der Sprache führt Ondaatje den Leser an die Plätze seiner Eltern und seiner Kindheit, so dass man sich das Leben zwischen Teeplantagen und Pferderennen, Regenzeit und Regenwald inmitten von unzähligen Gewürzen und Gerüchen bildlich vorstellen kann. Ondaatje vergisst weder auf die Diskrepanz zwischen den verschiedenen ansässigen Nationen, noch auf die oft ignorante Ächtung show more anderer Gesellschaftsschichten oder Kasten hinzuweisen. Nicht immer kann er die Aktionen seiner Familie gutheißen, doch selbst die kritischste Bemerkung hat noch eine liebevolle Färbung. Wahrscheinlich hat Michael Ondaatje als Kind von der Zunge des Thalagoya gekostet, denn "[v]iele Jahre später wird dies eine verbale Brillanz zeitigen, auch wenn diese manchmal mit schlechtem Benehmen einhergeht." show less
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Author Information
67+ Works 34,801 Members
Michael Ondaatje was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on September 12, 1943. He moved to Canada in 1962 and became a Canadian citizen. He received a B.A. from the University of Toronto and a M.A. from Queen's University, Kingston, and taught English at York University. He has written several volumes of poetry, novels, and other works including show more There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do, The Dainty Monsters, Rat Jelly, Coming through Slaughter, Running in the Family, In the Skin of a Lion, Anil's Ghost, and The Cat's Table. His title, Warlight, made the bestseller list in 2018. Ondaatje has won numerous awards including the Canadian Governor General's Award in 1971 for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and the Booker Prize in Fiction for The English Patient, which was adapted into a film in 1996. (Bowker Author Biography) Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka. He now lives in Toronto. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Aria di famiglia
- Original title
- Running in the Family
- Original publication date
- 1982
- Important places
- Sri Lanka; Ceylon; Kegalle
- Epigraph
- "I saw in this island fowls as big as our country geese having two heads...and other miraculous things which I will not here write of."
Oderic, (Franciscan Friar, 14th century)
"The Americans were able to put a ma... (show all)n on the moon because they knew English. The Sinhalese and Tamils whose knowledge of English was poor, thought that the earth was flat."
Douglas Amarsekera, Ceylon Sunday Times 29.1.78 - Dedication
- For Griffin and Quintin.
For Gillian, Janet, and Christopher. - First words
- Drought since December.
All across the city men roll carts with ice clothed in sawdust. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)During the monsoon, on my last morning, all this Beethoven and rain.
- Blurbers
- Atwood, Margaret; French, William; Adachi, Ken; Merwin, W.S.; Kingston, Maxine Hong; Edel, Leon (show all 7); Hornby, Nick
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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