Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jacki_f 's review for:
The Cat's Table
by Michael Ondaatje
This is the story of a three week journey in 1954 from Ceylon to England by sea. Michael is 11, and is leaving the only country he has ever known. Travelling alone, he quickly befriends two other boys of his age and the three of them spend the weeks exploring the ship, spying on their fellow passengers and generally getting up to mischief. Despite the fact that there are many similarities between the author's own story and the fictional Michael, this is apparently fictional. The book has a dreamy, timeless quality - the journey seems much longer than three weeks, which is probably how it would have felt to an 11 year old. Events that happened for a few days would stretch in the memory. The narrator himself comments that his memory is unreliable, which heightens the sense of unreality that permeates the pages.
I'm finding it very hard to know how to rate this book. It's short and easy enough to read, but it took me almost a month to get through. The writing is beautiful, even poetic, but there is very little in the way of a plot. Instead we get little vignettes about this passenger or that passenger, which are pleasant but never gave me the urge to pick the book up again and to read more. Towards the end some of the disparate strands do come together, but I think what will stay with me is not the characters, nor the storyline, but the impressions of a particular place in time. I'm glad I read it, but it's not a book I would hand to a friend and say "you must read this".
I'm finding it very hard to know how to rate this book. It's short and easy enough to read, but it took me almost a month to get through. The writing is beautiful, even poetic, but there is very little in the way of a plot. Instead we get little vignettes about this passenger or that passenger, which are pleasant but never gave me the urge to pick the book up again and to read more. Towards the end some of the disparate strands do come together, but I think what will stay with me is not the characters, nor the storyline, but the impressions of a particular place in time. I'm glad I read it, but it's not a book I would hand to a friend and say "you must read this".