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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
I feel like not liking this book makes me seem heartless, but I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps I was expecting more about what happened during and just after the tsunami. I wanted to hear more about her emotion but really it was just a memoir of her family. The stories felt gratuitous to me and the flow of the book was disjointed and jarring at times. Don't get me wrong, the author is entitled to work through this horrific situation any way she would like, and has every right to be whiny, I just don't want to read about it -- not my cup of tea.
It was one of those books that I saw the movie and found the book after the film. I wanted it to be more than it was. The books author tells the story of the tragic tidal wave in 2009. While the first few chapters cover the event, the majority of the story is about how their lives where before the event. I wanted more of the actual event and the days afterward. Ended up skimming the pages.
This amazing memoir chronicles the tsunami that swamped Sri Lanka in 2004 from the personal view of a mother who survived but lost her husband and two children, plus her parents, in the tsunami. While I recommend this book, be forewarned that it is a difficult read as the author recounts how she was swept away from her loved ones. It then tells of her trying to cope for the next seven years on a journey that takes her from alcoholism to wanting to commit suicide to seeing her loved ones in the little events and details of life ... a cricket bat, for example. Toward the end of those seven years, she seems to finally found peace with her new life. This is an extraordinary book.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This is a truly astounding book. In an instant, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami ripped Sonali's entire family out of her grasp and left her completely alone. She describes the moment that she noticed a strangeness in the ocean on Boxing Day morning and walks us through the mad race to outrun the water with her family, all while trying to comprehend what was happening around her. That day, she lost her two young sons, her loving husband and both her parents and she continues to wonder why she was forced to stay alive.
In a terrifyingly honest way, she explains her severe depression, her multiple attempts at suicide and the lengths she went to prevent herself from remembering her past during those first six months. But slowly, she ventures back to the places where her family gathered and she allows herself to remember and revisit each person. With loving description, she reveals the romance of meeting and loving her soulmate husband, the specific interests of each of her sons and her childhood memories with her parents. Over the next eight years, we watch her face the truth of her new life in their absence and she even begins imagining what their futures would have brought.
There is no happy ending here but there is the beginning of closure. Deraniyagala's writing is truly beautiful - even spectacular - and the emotions she conjures are raw and often it hurts to read on. But this is her life and she shows an amazing strength of spirit in allowing others to look in on her world after unimaginable devastation. Read It!
In a terrifyingly honest way, she explains her severe depression, her multiple attempts at suicide and the lengths she went to prevent herself from remembering her past during those first six months. But slowly, she ventures back to the places where her family gathered and she allows herself to remember and revisit each person. With loving description, she reveals the romance of meeting and loving her soulmate husband, the specific interests of each of her sons and her childhood memories with her parents. Over the next eight years, we watch her face the truth of her new life in their absence and she even begins imagining what their futures would have brought.
There is no happy ending here but there is the beginning of closure. Deraniyagala's writing is truly beautiful - even spectacular - and the emotions she conjures are raw and often it hurts to read on. But this is her life and she shows an amazing strength of spirit in allowing others to look in on her world after unimaginable devastation. Read It!
Heart wrenching. Well written. Honest. She deserves 5 stars for what she went through. But this book wasn't compelling or inspiring. I hope writing this was a healing experience for her.
This book is well written, but quite difficult to read. I find that I don't look forward to picking it up because I am sad and on the verge of tears the entire time I am reading it. But I can't put it down...I need to know what happens.
