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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
Myna is an 11 year old boy, sailing on the Oronsay from Colombo, Sri Lanka to London, England. Alone, he is leaving everything he has ever known in order to meet his mother and restart a life together in England. This 21 day voyage through the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Meditaranean and onward is a true adventure. He is part of the Cat's Table, the polar opposite of the Captain's Table, and is immersed in the stories of the lower-class characters who share his meals. On the journey, he makes life-long friends, discovers beauty, takes part in crimes, experiences lust and witnesses a daring escape.
Told expertly from the boy's perspective, Ondaajte masterfully shows how a child navigates this adult world while holding on to his child-like views. Unaware of the interwoven lives of the adults who share seats at his assigned dining table, Myna takes little pieces of his interactions and forms an incomplete puzzle. It isn't until 30 years have passed that he finally understands the events at sea all those years before.
This is a wonderful tale of being a child and letting all that adult nonsense roll passed, witnessed but unanalysed. Ondaajte reminds me that we can only take in what we understand. A beautiful story.
Told expertly from the boy's perspective, Ondaajte masterfully shows how a child navigates this adult world while holding on to his child-like views. Unaware of the interwoven lives of the adults who share seats at his assigned dining table, Myna takes little pieces of his interactions and forms an incomplete puzzle. It isn't until 30 years have passed that he finally understands the events at sea all those years before.
This is a wonderful tale of being a child and letting all that adult nonsense roll passed, witnessed but unanalysed. Ondaajte reminds me that we can only take in what we understand. A beautiful story.
In this book that is rendered so clearly in the voice and experience of an 11-year-old Michael (nicknamed Mynah), one is tempted to believe it is an autobiographical experience of Michael Ondaatje's. The main character is on a boat from Sri Lanka, bound for England to go to school and reunite with his mother. He encounters other children in the same 'boat' (bad pun!) and befriends them. The emotions, mischief, and curiosity of the 11-year-old boys come across as entertaining and insightful. Mynah's observations of adults is spot on and shows how children can grasp the truth of character better than adults can; they don't, however, always have the skill to analyze what that truth means, until later in life. There is a poignancy that shines through when narrated from the voice of an innocent a child.
A mysterious event surrounding the prisoner that is also on board the ship culminates in the climax of the tale, but this is not the story that leaves me loving this book. What I love so much is the way in which the experience of children sent abroad to school and to another life is captured so well. The ties that bind these children who need stability when uprooted from home are the driving force of the narrative. It is also the part of the book that I most relate to.
A mysterious event surrounding the prisoner that is also on board the ship culminates in the climax of the tale, but this is not the story that leaves me loving this book. What I love so much is the way in which the experience of children sent abroad to school and to another life is captured so well. The ties that bind these children who need stability when uprooted from home are the driving force of the narrative. It is also the part of the book that I most relate to.
That this oddly plotted, vivid, hypnotic story is fiction and not at all memoir makes my head spin. If forced to name my favorite writer at this moment, Ondaatje might well be it.
beautiful. A 3-weeks voyage for an 11-year-old, going from Ceylon to London, cross Arabian Sea, Red Sea and finally Mediterranean. Because it was an enclosed space, structure of the story resembles "Murder on Oriental Express", and typical of Ondaatje, how there are moment of luxurious beauty (Kip and Hana admiring the mural painting in the post-war italian church with the help of climbing gear and a torch, Almasy and K at the cave of swimmers, Nathaniel and Agnes in the empty house with the grey hounds, Nathaniel and the Darter on the Thames at night, Nathaniel and his mom play chess in their glass house in the garden,...), in The Cat's Table, the night when their ocean liner passed through the Suez Canal was breath taking, their first port of call at Aden, the ancient port city was also quite interesting.
This book starts out as a boy's adventure and an enchanted look at adulthood. It ends up as something darker: a reflection on the ways that young women and adult women shape their lives to try to serve or save the men they love. Michael, the alter-ego of the author, is the viewpoint character, but it's his cousin Emily who's the hero. And there's a mystery: even she is not sure about what she's done. Savor the language of this book, but don't let it distract you from wondering what's really going on, in these lives and in our own.
I suppose it is one of the great mysteries of the universe, the question of what exactly makes a great novelist, but Michael Ondaatje clearly is all of that.
This is the story of a boy named Michael (though the author assures us the story is entirely fictional) who runs amok on a ship called the "Oronsay" with his two friends as they cross the oceans from Sri Lanka to England. Though it would no doubt be unthinkable in our era, these boys (right around 12 years old, at a guess) are not travelling with any adults who are directly supervising them. They are going from their island nation to London to attend school, in those days a great honor.
Woven around them are vivid, engaging, fascinating characters who interact in ways that run the spectrum from conventional to surprising, but who are always believable. There is a circus troupe to entertain and a band to play. There are card sharps and kennel keepers. There is a secret garden deep in the bowels of the ship. And there is the central mystery of The Prisoner, who is being transported to England to stand trial for a heinous crime, though we can never be quite certain what this crime was.
All of this is told through the eyes of Michael, and it seems to me that Ondaatje is a master of expressing the thoughts and emotions of a boy, and the unique perspective the young bring to every situation, especially the sometimes unfathomable adult world.
But he is never splashy, never tries to grab the reader by the collar and demand that one listen to his story. Rather, he is like a quiet man who begins a story you fear may be dull because the teller is so gentle in the telling, but by degrees the storyteller's wisdom and gentle grace guide you to a rapt attention.
I suppose it goes without saying that I recommend this book highly and think it would be enjoyable to anyone. Please give it a look.
This is the story of a boy named Michael (though the author assures us the story is entirely fictional) who runs amok on a ship called the "Oronsay" with his two friends as they cross the oceans from Sri Lanka to England. Though it would no doubt be unthinkable in our era, these boys (right around 12 years old, at a guess) are not travelling with any adults who are directly supervising them. They are going from their island nation to London to attend school, in those days a great honor.
Woven around them are vivid, engaging, fascinating characters who interact in ways that run the spectrum from conventional to surprising, but who are always believable. There is a circus troupe to entertain and a band to play. There are card sharps and kennel keepers. There is a secret garden deep in the bowels of the ship. And there is the central mystery of The Prisoner, who is being transported to England to stand trial for a heinous crime, though we can never be quite certain what this crime was.
All of this is told through the eyes of Michael, and it seems to me that Ondaatje is a master of expressing the thoughts and emotions of a boy, and the unique perspective the young bring to every situation, especially the sometimes unfathomable adult world.
But he is never splashy, never tries to grab the reader by the collar and demand that one listen to his story. Rather, he is like a quiet man who begins a story you fear may be dull because the teller is so gentle in the telling, but by degrees the storyteller's wisdom and gentle grace guide you to a rapt attention.
I suppose it goes without saying that I recommend this book highly and think it would be enjoyable to anyone. Please give it a look.
Three boys are unescorted on a boat trip from Sri Lanka to England. They are seated at The Cat's table, as far from the captain as possible, and share the table with several neer do wells and a couple young women also lacking status. They careen through the ship exploring and spying and stealing breakfast while learning more and more about their traveling companions.
This book just flowed for me, beautiful writing, childhood captured, and the hint of a mystery although the mystery was perhaps less thrilling than anticipated. I had sort of forgotten about that feeling you get when you are a kid and go to a new environment and explore it on kids terms, below the radar of the adults but fully immersed in the place at a child's level, the level of adventure and intrigue and excitment. Adults with quirks were always more than they seemed, spies or thieves. The boys scenes work fantastically, five stars easily. The portion of the book dealing with them as grownups, in a flash forward manner, didn't resonate with me but probably due to it's meaning being more subtle and nuanced, more poetic in a way.
This book just flowed for me, beautiful writing, childhood captured, and the hint of a mystery although the mystery was perhaps less thrilling than anticipated. I had sort of forgotten about that feeling you get when you are a kid and go to a new environment and explore it on kids terms, below the radar of the adults but fully immersed in the place at a child's level, the level of adventure and intrigue and excitment. Adults with quirks were always more than they seemed, spies or thieves. The boys scenes work fantastically, five stars easily. The portion of the book dealing with them as grownups, in a flash forward manner, didn't resonate with me but probably due to it's meaning being more subtle and nuanced, more poetic in a way.
It dragged at times and the structure sometimes made it hard to read, but the writing and the overall tale told made up for those problems.
