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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
I started with five stars for almost half of the memoir. Oddly, I found myself growing impatient with the descriptions of events. The writing is excellent, immersing you completely in the moment through vivid detail.
However, I couldn’t help but ask myself—what’s the point in continuing to read? Maybe I had certain expectations, shaped by past experiences with other memoirs. But I realize it’s unfair to judge someone’s personal experience; instead, I should focus on the book itself.
I came across some very unkind reviews, and I’m struck by the audacity of people who judge her experience—especially when so few know what it’s like to lose their entire family in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t matter whether they passed away in a tsunami or a car accident—that’s irrelevant. The real shock is that they were all gone at once.
Obviously, I’m not here to "understand"—because I can’t. I won’t, unless life forces me into a situation that shakes me to my core the way she was shaken. And, needless to say, I don’t wish for that.
What drew me to this book was the desire to witness an example of human resilience—to see how someone survives after their very existence is shattered. I read this book to grasp what life really is, distancing myself from the fairy tales and illusions about what human life is supposed to be.
I have nothing to criticize about her experience. And, at the risk of repeating myself, I can’t understand why so many reviews debate her experience rather than the book itself. This is a book review. Even if you had been in that jeep with her, you still wouldn’t have the right to judge or compare suffering.
However, I couldn’t help but ask myself—what’s the point in continuing to read? Maybe I had certain expectations, shaped by past experiences with other memoirs. But I realize it’s unfair to judge someone’s personal experience; instead, I should focus on the book itself.
I came across some very unkind reviews, and I’m struck by the audacity of people who judge her experience—especially when so few know what it’s like to lose their entire family in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t matter whether they passed away in a tsunami or a car accident—that’s irrelevant. The real shock is that they were all gone at once.
Obviously, I’m not here to "understand"—because I can’t. I won’t, unless life forces me into a situation that shakes me to my core the way she was shaken. And, needless to say, I don’t wish for that.
What drew me to this book was the desire to witness an example of human resilience—to see how someone survives after their very existence is shattered. I read this book to grasp what life really is, distancing myself from the fairy tales and illusions about what human life is supposed to be.
I have nothing to criticize about her experience. And, at the risk of repeating myself, I can’t understand why so many reviews debate her experience rather than the book itself. This is a book review. Even if you had been in that jeep with her, you still wouldn’t have the right to judge or compare suffering.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
It feels like it would be a betrayal to give this anything less than five stars. It is, in many ways, beyond reviewing. This is a therapy memoir, a work of grief processing.
It is unbearably, exhaustingly, almost unreadably sad. I cried through the whole thing from start to finish. Miraculous book.
It is unbearably, exhaustingly, almost unreadably sad. I cried through the whole thing from start to finish. Miraculous book.
Feels almost obscene to give this a star rating because it's so personal. What an honour to be shown a grief so deep and visceral. Part of me kept wondering about the practicalities, the finances, the daily living, but I'm also glad she didn't go into it - it felt voyeuristic to even want to know.
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
A gut-punch of a book, chronicling the aftermath of the author's near-instantaneous loss of her two young sons, husband and parents during the tsunami of 2004.
I was disappointed by the New York Times review because I thought I was going to make such a well-played point about bravery... and there Cheryl Strayed went and made a similar point on her slightly larger platform. The nerve. Anyway: I, too, think the word "bravery" is thrown around in tragedy. In a literary sense, one of the bravest things an author can do is force readers to confront the uncomfortable, or to admit to darkness that we'd normally bury or obfuscate. Deraniyagala holds nothing back. She makes no effort to cast herself as a heroine or a sympathetic striver. She doesn't overwrite or chase the poetry of misery.
It makes perfect sense that Joan Didion would be the lead blurb on the back cover ("An amazing, beautiful book"). Personally, I found Deraniyagala's book even more affecting than [b:The Year of Magical Thinking|7815|The Year of Magical Thinking|Joan Didion|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327878638s/7815.jpg|1659905] or [b:Blue Nights|10252302|Blue Nights|Joan Didion|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1319148558s/10252302.jpg|15152485].
Loving the book is obviously a subjective sort of thing, but the dregs of the book reading community are the people who leave one-star reviews because they have such all-encompassing disdain for financially privileged families that it suffocates their empathy... or because they play armchair quarterback and decide that THEY would have somehow responded "better" in the aftermath of losing the five most important people in their lives while almost dying themselves... or, perhaps most grating of all, because they wanted Deraniyagala to "get on with it" or become a grief counselor and help other parents and/or fall in love and "today is the first day of the rest of my life - THE END!"
It doesn't always work like that. There are powerful moments of healing as the author reconnects to her past, but it's far from a tidy tale of grief rehab.
The horror isn't just the immediate aftermath when you're wailing inconsolably around the clock. The horror is the fifth year when a stray item of clothing or forgotten song or fleeting memory destroys you all over again.
I'm not sure I've ever read a book that drives that point home so clearly.
I was disappointed by the New York Times review because I thought I was going to make such a well-played point about bravery... and there Cheryl Strayed went and made a similar point on her slightly larger platform. The nerve. Anyway: I, too, think the word "bravery" is thrown around in tragedy. In a literary sense, one of the bravest things an author can do is force readers to confront the uncomfortable, or to admit to darkness that we'd normally bury or obfuscate. Deraniyagala holds nothing back. She makes no effort to cast herself as a heroine or a sympathetic striver. She doesn't overwrite or chase the poetry of misery.
It makes perfect sense that Joan Didion would be the lead blurb on the back cover ("An amazing, beautiful book"). Personally, I found Deraniyagala's book even more affecting than [b:The Year of Magical Thinking|7815|The Year of Magical Thinking|Joan Didion|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327878638s/7815.jpg|1659905] or [b:Blue Nights|10252302|Blue Nights|Joan Didion|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1319148558s/10252302.jpg|15152485].
Loving the book is obviously a subjective sort of thing, but the dregs of the book reading community are the people who leave one-star reviews because they have such all-encompassing disdain for financially privileged families that it suffocates their empathy... or because they play armchair quarterback and decide that THEY would have somehow responded "better" in the aftermath of losing the five most important people in their lives while almost dying themselves... or, perhaps most grating of all, because they wanted Deraniyagala to "get on with it" or become a grief counselor and help other parents and/or fall in love and "today is the first day of the rest of my life - THE END!"
It doesn't always work like that. There are powerful moments of healing as the author reconnects to her past, but it's far from a tidy tale of grief rehab.
The horror isn't just the immediate aftermath when you're wailing inconsolably around the clock. The horror is the fifth year when a stray item of clothing or forgotten song or fleeting memory destroys you all over again.
I'm not sure I've ever read a book that drives that point home so clearly.
Hoewel het boek een niet te bevatten verhaal vertelt over het verliezen van zowel je man als je kinderen als je ouders bij de tsunami van 2004, greep het mij nooit echt vast. Misschien omdat het te onwezenlijk is om je voor te stellen? Je gaat mij in het hoofd en de gedachten van de auteur, maar ergens had ik het gevoel dat het wat oppervlakkig bleef. Het gaat voornamelijk om de gedachten rond haar gezin dat ze kwijt is, maar weinig rond hoe ze haar leven al dan niet probeert terug op te pakken en waarom ze beslist om te verhuizen enzo... Het leest vlot, maar was voor mij geen hoogvlieger.
What a beautiful memoir! Wave showcases Sonali Deraniyagala's mindset before, during, and after the wave. You can feel all her distress, sadness, and anger after experiencing such an overwhelming natural disaster that changed her life forever.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced