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actually_juliette 's review for:
Wave
by Sonali Deraniyagala
In 2004, Deraniyagala's two young sons, husband, and parents were killed by the tsunami that swept the coast of Sri Lanka. This memoir details her grief, anger, guilt, and depression in the aftermath and remembers her life before the wave.
This is easily one of the best books I've read this year, if not the best. Deraniyagala's prose is beautiful. It's not poetic or flowing. At times, her sentences were choppy and stark, but I thought those sentences served to capture her emotional state.
I felt like a masochistic voyeur while reading this book. She is candid about her suicide attempts, her hatred for her family and friends who kept her alive, and her feelings for other people who, like her, survived the tsunami.
I noticed that Deraniyagala's unflinching candor was not appreciated by other Goodreads readers, who found her unlikeable. But that's the thing about memoirs: they're written by people about themselves. People can be likeable and unlikeable. Real people are not characters in a book. I, for one, could understand that Deraniyagala would be selfish to the plight of other survivors when she didn't know if her sons were alive or dead, when she strongly felt that they were dead and she could not find them in the black mud that covered Yala.
Though painful, I found Deraniyagala's memories of motherhood and married life to be poignant and sweet. She gives her sons and husband a second life through her words. For that reason, alone, this memoir is worth reading.
This is easily one of the best books I've read this year, if not the best. Deraniyagala's prose is beautiful. It's not poetic or flowing. At times, her sentences were choppy and stark, but I thought those sentences served to capture her emotional state.
I felt like a masochistic voyeur while reading this book. She is candid about her suicide attempts, her hatred for her family and friends who kept her alive, and her feelings for other people who, like her, survived the tsunami.
I noticed that Deraniyagala's unflinching candor was not appreciated by other Goodreads readers, who found her unlikeable. But that's the thing about memoirs: they're written by people about themselves. People can be likeable and unlikeable. Real people are not characters in a book. I, for one, could understand that Deraniyagala would be selfish to the plight of other survivors when she didn't know if her sons were alive or dead, when she strongly felt that they were dead and she could not find them in the black mud that covered Yala.
Though painful, I found Deraniyagala's memories of motherhood and married life to be poignant and sweet. She gives her sons and husband a second life through her words. For that reason, alone, this memoir is worth reading.