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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
"Now I sit in this garden in New York, and I hear them, jubilant, gleeful, on our lawn."
“And everywhere, on bare ground and between cracks in the floors, tiny pink and white flowers that flourish along the seashore forced their way up. Mini mal, or graveyard flowers, they are called. I resented this renewal. How dare you heal.”
“I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself...I can see though that my secrecy does me no favors. It probably makes worse my sense of being outlandish. It confirms to me that it might be abhorrent, my story, or that few can relate to it.”
“And everywhere, on bare ground and between cracks in the floors, tiny pink and white flowers that flourish along the seashore forced their way up. Mini mal, or graveyard flowers, they are called. I resented this renewal. How dare you heal.”
“I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself...I can see though that my secrecy does me no favors. It probably makes worse my sense of being outlandish. It confirms to me that it might be abhorrent, my story, or that few can relate to it.”
It is sometimes very hard to review a book that is the true story of someone's tragedy but I found this compelling all the way through. Ms. Deraniyagala was nakedly honest in her portrayal of her grief. It is impossible to imagine--even after reading her account--what is to walk in her shoes.
I rarely cry. Ever. But this book made me cry like a child. How gripped I was from the narrative - it's intense. However it's one of the most beautifully devastating works I've ever picked up.
At once devastating and hopeful, this book is a wonderful autobiographical account of the worst moment of the author's life, and how she is able to move away from that devastation in the aftermath. One thing I loved about this book - as compared to other autobiographies - is that Sonali doesn't have the same Main Character moral high ground approach, where all the bad stuff is carefully snipped away to portray a martyr. Nor does she have the Main Character 'even if I did wrong, it's completely justified' approach. She is just a deeply human person experiencing something truly awful, and coping with it all in the best way she can. It is a wonderful book, of an absolutely soul-crushing event. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is feeling disconnected from the world around them, and would like to reconnect with the fundamental humanity in all of us.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I read this book in one sitting, on a late December afternoon. Despite my reading fervour, I'll carry her beautiful, sad story with me for a long time. This book is a fitting tribute to Sonali's lost family and for her inspiring resolve.
Sonali was in Sri Lanka on Boxing Day in 2004 when there was an earthquake in the ocean that caused a huge tsunami to rip across the water, coming on to shore in many countries in the region, killing more than 200,000 people. The book starts in her hotel room that morning with her husband, two boys, and family friends. Her family friend notices the tide start to look different, then the water start to come in. She urges them to leave and the family runs. Sonali doesn't even have time to notify her parents next door.
This book has one of the most chilling starts I've ever read. It's a first person account of Sonali leaving her hotel room, running for safety, and the wave overtaking them. She loses contact with her family and struggles to stay alive. Books don't usually impact my dreams, but I actually had nightmares the night after I read the start of this book. It was riveting.
Sonali finds out that none of her family survives. Right after the wave, she winds up at the hospital, hoping that one of her family members will show up and completely in shock. Sonali has absolutely no filter on her thoughts during this time and honestly I feel less of her because of this. She thinks some pretty horrible things of a child that survives.
The rest of the book focuses solely on Sonali's grief. She is, understandably, destroyed by losing her whole family: husband, two children, mother and father. She shuts herself away in a room of a family member in Sri Lanka, not returning to her home in London for years. She tries alcohol to sooth her grief. Eventually it gets to the point where remembering doesn't hurt her, but helps her. However, this part of the book reads like it should be her journal rather than a book for public consumption.
If you're looking for a book on the tsunami, this is not the book for you. This book is completely about grief and what happens to a woman who loses her entire family.
This book has one of the most chilling starts I've ever read. It's a first person account of Sonali leaving her hotel room, running for safety, and the wave overtaking them. She loses contact with her family and struggles to stay alive. Books don't usually impact my dreams, but I actually had nightmares the night after I read the start of this book. It was riveting.
Sonali finds out that none of her family survives. Right after the wave, she winds up at the hospital, hoping that one of her family members will show up and completely in shock. Sonali has absolutely no filter on her thoughts during this time and honestly I feel less of her because of this. She thinks some pretty horrible things of a child that survives.
The rest of the book focuses solely on Sonali's grief. She is, understandably, destroyed by losing her whole family: husband, two children, mother and father. She shuts herself away in a room of a family member in Sri Lanka, not returning to her home in London for years. She tries alcohol to sooth her grief. Eventually it gets to the point where remembering doesn't hurt her, but helps her. However, this part of the book reads like it should be her journal rather than a book for public consumption.
If you're looking for a book on the tsunami, this is not the book for you. This book is completely about grief and what happens to a woman who loses her entire family.
If grief could be considered uncensored, I think WAVE by Sonali Deraniyagala would fit the description. After losing her husband, two young boys and her parents to the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, Sonali has survivor's guilt and an immense grief that will, undoubtedly, last her entire life but this memoir allows her to come to terms with the tragedy and find hope amidst the unbearable loss. I can only imagine how hard it was to preserve these memories of the people she loved the most on these pages but her unsentimental and raw prose helps the reader find a way into understanding her pain and her unending love for Steve, Vik and Malli.
Simply put: devastating. It's also a powerfully moving memoir about how someone recovers and survives a deeply traumatic loss. A loving memory of her self and the family she lost during the tsunami in Sri Lanka over a decade ago.
