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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
This was a pick-up at my favorite independent bookstore last weekend. I found it engrossing in the beginning, although I struggled to finish it. Not because it was bad, or even too heavy. I think I was just easily distracted.
Wave is Dr. Sonali Deraniyagala’s story about her life after the 2004 tsunami that wracked Southeast Asia. She was visiting a resort town in her native Sri Lanka with her parents, husband, and two sons. She was the only one to survive the tsunami.
Each section of this book follows a timeline, from the moment just before the tsunami hit through 2012, when Dr. Deraniyagala is teaching in New York City. It is heartbreaking at times (obviously), but it doesn’t feel like any other book of loss I’ve read. I think part of that is due to the fact that the book continues over so many years; it isn’t just about her first year of trying to get through the pain; it is about how her life has changed and how it hasn’t. It’s about how she is honest with herself but not honest with strangers when it comes to that part of her life.
I am having trouble describing the feelings the book brought up in me. This wasn’t about a ‘triumphant journey of unimaginable tragedy,’ this was instead a look into the life of one individual dealing with loss on a very large scale. Yet it’s often confined to chapters of the author unwilling to leave her room, or the house she is in, or the city she is in.
There is no one moment where she rises up and ‘moves on,’ instead the book serves as a way for Dr. Deraniyagala to both share the story of her life since 2012, and also share who her sons and husband were. There are stories of Dr. Deraniyagala contemplating suicide in a very matter-of-fact manner, but there are also stories about how much her son Vik loved blue whales. It’s both a love letter to her family and a way to let the world know a little bit about what it is like for someone to work through loss on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.
I think this is a book worth reading. I appreciate that it wasn’t as simplistic as some of the memoirs I’ve read; Dr. Deraniyagala shares the reality of loss in a way I haven’t read before. I don’t know if it would be helpful for someone who has lost a child or partner, but I can see it providing some confirmation that grief manifests in myriad ways, and that’s just how it is.
Wave is Dr. Sonali Deraniyagala’s story about her life after the 2004 tsunami that wracked Southeast Asia. She was visiting a resort town in her native Sri Lanka with her parents, husband, and two sons. She was the only one to survive the tsunami.
Each section of this book follows a timeline, from the moment just before the tsunami hit through 2012, when Dr. Deraniyagala is teaching in New York City. It is heartbreaking at times (obviously), but it doesn’t feel like any other book of loss I’ve read. I think part of that is due to the fact that the book continues over so many years; it isn’t just about her first year of trying to get through the pain; it is about how her life has changed and how it hasn’t. It’s about how she is honest with herself but not honest with strangers when it comes to that part of her life.
I am having trouble describing the feelings the book brought up in me. This wasn’t about a ‘triumphant journey of unimaginable tragedy,’ this was instead a look into the life of one individual dealing with loss on a very large scale. Yet it’s often confined to chapters of the author unwilling to leave her room, or the house she is in, or the city she is in.
There is no one moment where she rises up and ‘moves on,’ instead the book serves as a way for Dr. Deraniyagala to both share the story of her life since 2012, and also share who her sons and husband were. There are stories of Dr. Deraniyagala contemplating suicide in a very matter-of-fact manner, but there are also stories about how much her son Vik loved blue whales. It’s both a love letter to her family and a way to let the world know a little bit about what it is like for someone to work through loss on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.
I think this is a book worth reading. I appreciate that it wasn’t as simplistic as some of the memoirs I’ve read; Dr. Deraniyagala shares the reality of loss in a way I haven’t read before. I don’t know if it would be helpful for someone who has lost a child or partner, but I can see it providing some confirmation that grief manifests in myriad ways, and that’s just how it is.
I was about 40 pages into this book when I realized that it was not a fictionalized account of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, but rather a memoir of the event, written by a woman who lost her parents, her husband, and her children all in one day. When all of these "characters" became real people, the misery I had been feeling as I read about them became so much worse. This is a really difficult book to read. It is a stark, honest, wrenching depiction of grief and horror and the many ways it continues to ravage a person for even years after the tragedy. I feel like a jerk complaining about how hard it was to read this book when this is something the author actually lived through and continues to live through every day. I don't know what else to say about this book except wow, it is remarkable to think about the grief that people carry around and how they somehow manage to keep breathing. How is it even possible?
Such a sad, horrible, heart-wrenching book. The words are so beautiful and and so well written though, I loved it.
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
I picked this up because Carrie Coon has cited it as important to shaping her performance as Nora Durst in The Leftovers (one of my favorite / the greatest television characters ever) and it absolutely wrecked me, as I should have expected. Beautifully written & a really truthful reflection on the violence, intensity, and illogical nature of grief.
How does one even begin to sum up a reaction to Deraniyagala's Wave, a book so personal that it hurts? With spare prose, Deraniyagala relates her survival of the 2004 tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and claimed the lives of her parents, husband, and two young boys. She is raw and honest in her depiction of her grief and depression, interspersing happy memories of her family that now bring her sadness to relive. Episodes such as the one in which she downs alcohol relentlessly or when she torments the new tenants of her parents' house are shocking, but you can't look away. There is no happy ending, no closure, but this book is stunning in its portrayal of living with the aftermath of a disaster. Deraniyagala pulls no punches and has crafted a beautiful, gut-wrenching, elegiac book.
Deraniyagala articulately describes how unfathomable grief changed every aspect of her life, amazingly without melodrama or Oprahesque ah-hah moments. I found it raw and real... I've never been so grateful for my teeny, tiny problems.
Desperately sad, and then a bit less so near the end. Deraniyagala loses her entire family in the Sri Lanka Tsunami in 2004 and chronicles her memories, the act of remembering, and grief.