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This book was astonishing. I was amazed how fast it was to read, which was welcome because the subject is extremely painful. I was on the verge of tears through a lot of it. Yet several things made it a book I will never forget and would even read again despite the pain. First, Deraniyagala's depiction of grief is so painstakingly personal and precise that it brings a reader into that experience. And then ultimately, after an almost unbelievably long period -- a couple of years of incapacitation; nearly four years before she can bear to go home -- she begins to heal. In the process of that grief and healing, the book ultimately is about the power of love and how mysteriously love works its way into our beings.
Many of the negative reviews here criticize Deraniyagala for being well-off, for not writing about all the other tsunami victims (she mentions only learning the scope of the disaster much later, because she was in such shock), or for having the reactions she had in the midst of the disaster itself. This book is not about the tsunami, it is not about the other victims, and it is not about a narrator becoming a hero. It is rather one person narrating in detail how she experienced the very kind of personal disaster that especially parents cannot even bear to contemplate, and how she somehow managed to put herself back together, piece by piece, and rediscover how to live, and eventually how to even remember.
Many of the negative reviews here criticize Deraniyagala for being well-off, for not writing about all the other tsunami victims (she mentions only learning the scope of the disaster much later, because she was in such shock), or for having the reactions she had in the midst of the disaster itself. This book is not about the tsunami, it is not about the other victims, and it is not about a narrator becoming a hero. It is rather one person narrating in detail how she experienced the very kind of personal disaster that especially parents cannot even bear to contemplate, and how she somehow managed to put herself back together, piece by piece, and rediscover how to live, and eventually how to even remember.