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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My least favourite Ondaatje book. It all felt a bit flat to me. So much so that I'm struggling to think of anything interesting to say about it. Perhaps the main problem is the central character Anil who never came alive for me. She's something of a cliché, the career woman floundering in an affair with a married man. There's not much psychology in his creation of her. I never quite found her plausible, likeable or even interesting. Odd, because we're told too much about her rather than not enough. The most memorable thing she does in the novel is stab her boyfriend in the arm when he won't let go of her hair. This happens in America and seemed a wholly gratuitous and melodramatic gesture which had no follow up. The male characters were much more successful.
Anil's Ghost has all the ingredients to be a bewitching novel. As usual Ondaatje uses his novels to learn and write about exotic professions. Here we have a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an epigraphist. The setting is war torn Sri Lanka so he's writing about his native country. And yet all its compelling components never fell into place for me. Neither was the writing as inspired as is generally the case with him.
Ondaatje is brilliant at creating all the components of a thriller and then wilfully ignoring the simple formula for thrillers. The central quest here is to identify a skeleton and establish it's a murder victim of government forces. A kind of mystical sculptor is employed to give the skull features. This part of the novel didn't work for me. One night this man stabs himself in the neck, another bit of gratuitous melodrama that echoed Anil's stabbing of her boyfriend. I was never sure what all the hard, dangerous work was likely to achieve. No one, after all, is any doubt that government forces are murdering people. The identity of the skeleton, which might have been a compelling mystery, is passed over as of little interest to Anil and her companion. They simply need to confirm that his death was recent.
The characters are all solitary individuals, some by design, some by default. I'm not quite sure why no one in the novel was capable of sustaining a relationship. Is Ondaatje saying it's this failing that leads a country to fight with itself? Ultimately, I don't think I understood this novel very well, whether that's my fault or his I'm not sure…
Anil's Ghost has all the ingredients to be a bewitching novel. As usual Ondaatje uses his novels to learn and write about exotic professions. Here we have a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an epigraphist. The setting is war torn Sri Lanka so he's writing about his native country. And yet all its compelling components never fell into place for me. Neither was the writing as inspired as is generally the case with him.
Ondaatje is brilliant at creating all the components of a thriller and then wilfully ignoring the simple formula for thrillers. The central quest here is to identify a skeleton and establish it's a murder victim of government forces. A kind of mystical sculptor is employed to give the skull features. This part of the novel didn't work for me. One night this man stabs himself in the neck, another bit of gratuitous melodrama that echoed Anil's stabbing of her boyfriend. I was never sure what all the hard, dangerous work was likely to achieve. No one, after all, is any doubt that government forces are murdering people. The identity of the skeleton, which might have been a compelling mystery, is passed over as of little interest to Anil and her companion. They simply need to confirm that his death was recent.
The characters are all solitary individuals, some by design, some by default. I'm not quite sure why no one in the novel was capable of sustaining a relationship. Is Ondaatje saying it's this failing that leads a country to fight with itself? Ultimately, I don't think I understood this novel very well, whether that's my fault or his I'm not sure…
When I look at Michael Ondaatje's author picture I think, well, this is going to be a surly read. How wrong could I get?
Anil's Ghost is a beautifully rendered, elegantly written story of love, loss, conscience, and discovery. It takes place in Sri Lanka in the later years of the horrible, and extended civil war, and focuses on the lives and work of the title character, a forensic anthropologist, and Sarath, her government connected archeologist partner. Many other characters come into focus, and if anything, this is a character driven novel, and a lesson in how to do it right.
I devoured this book, read it in two days while vacationing on Kauai - a perfect locale for the fluid and languid prose that touched on politics, history, myth, the protagonst's back story, and a murder mystery that was emblematic of Sri Lanka's turmoil.
It's a terrific story, with terrifically written characters, and with a prose style that I'd have to call miraculous. Anil's Ghost is one of the most beautifully written books I've read, and for right now is my top book of - the century!
Anil's Ghost is a beautifully rendered, elegantly written story of love, loss, conscience, and discovery. It takes place in Sri Lanka in the later years of the horrible, and extended civil war, and focuses on the lives and work of the title character, a forensic anthropologist, and Sarath, her government connected archeologist partner. Many other characters come into focus, and if anything, this is a character driven novel, and a lesson in how to do it right.
I devoured this book, read it in two days while vacationing on Kauai - a perfect locale for the fluid and languid prose that touched on politics, history, myth, the protagonst's back story, and a murder mystery that was emblematic of Sri Lanka's turmoil.
It's a terrific story, with terrifically written characters, and with a prose style that I'd have to call miraculous. Anil's Ghost is one of the most beautifully written books I've read, and for right now is my top book of - the century!
Always an astounding writer, Ondaatje is at his best with Anil's Ghost. It's a beautifully and tenderly written love story to a country riven by war and insurrection. I fell in love with both brothers and Ananda, the painter, and their quiet dedication to a country that had betrayed them and so many many times over.
Complex, powerful. Follows Anil Tissera as she returns to Sri Lanka as a representative of a human rights group to investigate political murders known to have occurred in the civil war.
The story focuses on a single skeleton -- I'm not sure how much this is for the literary flexibility, but I found it an irritant.
The story is multilayered, following a range of characters -- and they are characters, because the sparse writing keeps them at a distance from this reader.
worth reading, not sure I'll reread.
The story focuses on a single skeleton -- I'm not sure how much this is for the literary flexibility, but I found it an irritant.
The story is multilayered, following a range of characters -- and they are characters, because the sparse writing keeps them at a distance from this reader.
worth reading, not sure I'll reread.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I thought I would like this book more than I did. One of my lifetime bookish goals is to read a book from every country in the world. I did learn about Sri Lanka and it made me want to know more about the country and its history, but I did not like the book. I didn't like the writing style, it was hard to get into the book because it was so disjointed and I wasn't able to form a connection to the characters either.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
My first book by Michael Ondaatje was a pleasant surprise - despite the darkness! There’s something about a Booker winner that just intimidates me as a reader, which I know is silly, but it is what it is. Which was why I was happy when I realised his writing is not at all impenetrable, but beautiful, rhythmic and evocative.
.
Anil’s Ghost is set in Sri Lanka in the late 20th century with the civil war raging. Ondaatje captures the fear, uncertainty and chaos which reigned over the country as three opposing sides waged war throughout. It often flits away from Anil’s story, focusing on characters whose lives have been irrevocably altered by the war, either disappearing, losing someone, or being forcibly assigned a role within it they can’t escape.
.
Anil is a returnee, having lived abroad for years before coming back to Sri Lanka as part of an international human rights group to investigate organised murder campaigns. She’s paired with Sarath, an archaeologist she doesn’t know if she can trust. There’s more to the (loose) plot but I think this is one of those books where it’s best to just crack it open and let yourself be carried away by the prose and the story.
.
It’s a bleak book for sure, as to be expected in a book about a civil war and mass murder. But it’s gorgeously written and filled with characters that will move you. Very glad I finally conquered my fear and picked it up!
.
Anil’s Ghost is set in Sri Lanka in the late 20th century with the civil war raging. Ondaatje captures the fear, uncertainty and chaos which reigned over the country as three opposing sides waged war throughout. It often flits away from Anil’s story, focusing on characters whose lives have been irrevocably altered by the war, either disappearing, losing someone, or being forcibly assigned a role within it they can’t escape.
.
Anil is a returnee, having lived abroad for years before coming back to Sri Lanka as part of an international human rights group to investigate organised murder campaigns. She’s paired with Sarath, an archaeologist she doesn’t know if she can trust. There’s more to the (loose) plot but I think this is one of those books where it’s best to just crack it open and let yourself be carried away by the prose and the story.
.
It’s a bleak book for sure, as to be expected in a book about a civil war and mass murder. But it’s gorgeously written and filled with characters that will move you. Very glad I finally conquered my fear and picked it up!
It’s the civil war in Sri Lanka. Anil, the novel’s heroine, is a forensic anthropologist and part of a team investigating possible war crimes. She is paired for the investigation with a government-selected archaeologist named Sarath, an enigmatic man 16 years her senior. Together Anil and Sarath find four skeletons whom they nickname Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Sailor, the last a source of obsessive fascination. The task is to give Sailor back his identity in order to incriminate the government of war crimes. In the process Anil will have her own identity given back to her.
As you’d expect from Ondjaate this is a novel brimming with beautiful prose. Its central theme is a kind of archaeology of the soul. Anil in the course of the novel will sift through layers of the soil of her own being and of her native country’s history, raising ghosts. On one level it’s a detective story but runs much deeper than that. Though not quite as far reaching as The English Patient it shares a similar structure - a mosaic of fragmented events that are eventually artfully interlocked.
As you’d expect from Ondjaate this is a novel brimming with beautiful prose. Its central theme is a kind of archaeology of the soul. Anil in the course of the novel will sift through layers of the soil of her own being and of her native country’s history, raising ghosts. On one level it’s a detective story but runs much deeper than that. Though not quite as far reaching as The English Patient it shares a similar structure - a mosaic of fragmented events that are eventually artfully interlocked.