[.ca] Running in the Family (ISBN 0771068832)

Amazon.ca:
Picture The Great Gatsby with heat, tea plantations, and even more gin and you've got part of Michael Ondaatje's 1982 Running in the Family. Set in Ondaatje's native Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Running begins with the champagne shenanigans of competitively romantic upper-class youths swept up in that first global trend, the Jazz Age: "They all went swimming again with just the modesty of the night. An arm touched a face. A foot touched a stomach. They could have almost drowned or fallen in love." The main characters to emerge from this frolicking set of dancers and drinkers are Ondaatje's parents, and it is upon them that the book turns from moonlit serenades to financial and emotional ruin. Part travelogue, part family memoir (complete with photographs), part collection of poems, Running is also a poignant autobiography/biography that reimagines the alcoholism of Ondaatje's father Mervyn and the eventual (inevitable?) divorce of his parents. In telling these tall tales, Ondaatje is affectionate and insightful toward a father who was clearly difficult to accommodate in life. Driving intoxicated over a rickety wooden bridge no one else would trust in any condition, Mervyn turns to young Michael to wink and claim, "God loves a drunk." Running marks the commencement of Ondaatje's growing interest in migration (does running run in the family?). The expatriate characters of Ondaatje's later novels are here presaged by a generation of Ceylonese steaming off to England for education and an enduring love of cricket. Salman Rushdie knows that "the past is a country from which we are all migrants." In Running in the Family, Ondaatje reaches back, inwards, and abroad to map that most treasured and troubled of places, the human heart. --Darryl Whetter

you *can* come home again!:
In Running in the Family (1982), Ondaatje turns the biographical microscope on himself and his personal family history. There are wonderful anecdotes about his parent's courtship (a story so amazing it would make for an excellent novel in itself) and Ondaatje's feelings on returning to Ceylon. I was pleasantly surprised to find that in addition to the personal anecdotes, many of the poems I love in "The Cinnamon Peeler" have their origins here. This book is a masterful blend of prose and poetry and a must read for the Ondaatje fan.

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.

Lush, evocative, and poetic!:
"Running in the Family" is an impressionistically written and reflective memoir of Michael Ondaatje's eccentric Ceylonese family. The book begins with a series of disjointed stories about Ondaatje's parents and grandparents. I found this part somewhat hard to get through as Ondaatje drops into the stories without providing the reader with the necessary information to understand who the players are and why they are important. However, since the book is highly impressionistic in style, perhaps this approach works. After all, most of us learn about our family history in bits and pieces; we don't pick up yarns and memory bites in chronological order. The third section, "Don't Talk to Me about Matisse" is a literary treasure! Ondaatje weaves a travel journal with childhood memories. Ondaatje's journey through Sri Lanka and memory land is depicted with great passion and reflection: "I witnessed everything. One morning I would wake and just smell things for the whole day, it was so rich I had to select senses. And still everything moved slowly with the assured fateful speed of a coconut falling on someone's head, like the Jaffna train, like the fan at low speed, like the necessary sleep in the afternoon with dreams blinded by toddy." Ondaatje generously included several of his poems in the middle of the book. "The Cinnamon Peeler", with its strong sensuality, serves as a fitting metaphor for the stories about romantic interludes in the author's family. "The Cinnamon Peeler" is so beautiful, I plan to commit it to memory. Ondaatje dwells on the salient qualities of his relatives and homeland. If this book were a painting, it would be a mostly green wash of color with bright, blood red splashes. The red splashes could represent the tragedy so inherent in Ondaatje's family history. Alcoholism and mental illness rule the house in this family. There are many humorous moments, however, and Ondaatje delivers them with great bravado: "Lalla's great claim to fame was that she was the first woman in Ceylon to have a mastectomy. ... She kept losing the contraption to servants who were mystified by it as well as to the dog, Chindit, who would be found gnawing at the foam as if it were tender chicken." These hilarious memories give the reader a reprieve from the underlying tragedy like a much-needed downpour during a drought. In the final sections, Ondaatje slowly reveals the many layers of his father's sad, but remarkable life. One chapter, called "Dialogues" merely consists of bits and pieces of conversations about his father. Whether Ondaatje imagined these conversations or actually heard them retold is not important. They give homage to his father in a unique and poignant way. If you're looking for a travel journal on Sri Lanka, don't look here. But, if you want unforgettable impressions of an exotic land and a remarkable family, if you yearn for a memoir rendered with the finest of literary care, "Running in the Family" will surely please.

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.

A lost paradise:
In this magical book what Micheal captures is the essence of a bygone era. Sri Lanka (Ceylon) also had a generation like Scott Fitzgerald's jazz generation. His parents are from this generation and most of his books, I feel, are influenced by it. My parents were also from this generation and I caught the tail end of it. If any, non Sri Lankan, visits Sri Lanka, after reading this book they will be disapointed. Like the traveller in one of Borges stories, who finds pieces of an ancient map buried in the desert, you will find only bits and pieces of what he describes buried in the present society. Sri Lanka today is a true example of Satre's dictum "Hell is other people" and his recent book Anil's Ghost depicts it well. It truly is a paradise lost.