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Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: Read a book about a natural disaster
Deraniyagala has written a lovely, lyrical book about her husband and sons, who were killed in the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in December, 2004 (her parents were killed, too, and she writes about them but focuses on her husband and her boys). Her expression of her love and her loss is gorgeous. Mind you: this book is not about the tsunami. There are no statistics, there are no stories of other survivors; it's just Deraniyagala and her grief, and then Deraniyagala and her memories. She muddles through an unfathomable loss, and I can't even imagine how she's still standing.
Yet, I find myself giving the book just three stars. Why? Honestly, I didn't like the author. I feel for her, of course, and when the book ended I was glad to know that she had been able to process much of her grief. But there were times, early on, when I was floored by the way she responded to her loss; as the book went on, I was shocked that she didn't acknowledge these responses as inappropriate or horrifying. Take, for example, her terrorizing of the family that moved into her parents' home. She rang their doorbell and ran, played loud music outside their house, and called them at all hours, making ghostly noises, ignoring their please to just tell them what she wanted. She faced no apparent consequences for this and expressed no remorse within the pages of the book. She just seems to take it as her right to express her grief in any way she needed to, and those who were affected didn't matter. She needed help - grief counseling or a psychiatrist - but didn't seek it out, nor did her family find help for her. They just hid the knives. She doesn't reflect on this at all. There is nothing for grieving people to learn from; it's just 100% her experience, with nothing else here that doesn't relate specifically to her and her feelings.
Now, that's the book she wanted to write, and it's beautiful. It really is. But I can't say that I enjoyed it.
Deraniyagala has written a lovely, lyrical book about her husband and sons, who were killed in the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in December, 2004 (her parents were killed, too, and she writes about them but focuses on her husband and her boys). Her expression of her love and her loss is gorgeous. Mind you: this book is not about the tsunami. There are no statistics, there are no stories of other survivors; it's just Deraniyagala and her grief, and then Deraniyagala and her memories. She muddles through an unfathomable loss, and I can't even imagine how she's still standing.
Yet, I find myself giving the book just three stars. Why? Honestly, I didn't like the author. I feel for her, of course, and when the book ended I was glad to know that she had been able to process much of her grief. But there were times, early on, when I was floored by the way she responded to her loss; as the book went on, I was shocked that she didn't acknowledge these responses as inappropriate or horrifying. Take, for example, her terrorizing of the family that moved into her parents' home. She rang their doorbell and ran, played loud music outside their house, and called them at all hours, making ghostly noises, ignoring their please to just tell them what she wanted. She faced no apparent consequences for this and expressed no remorse within the pages of the book. She just seems to take it as her right to express her grief in any way she needed to, and those who were affected didn't matter. She needed help - grief counseling or a psychiatrist - but didn't seek it out, nor did her family find help for her. They just hid the knives. She doesn't reflect on this at all. There is nothing for grieving people to learn from; it's just 100% her experience, with nothing else here that doesn't relate specifically to her and her feelings.
Now, that's the book she wanted to write, and it's beautiful. It really is. But I can't say that I enjoyed it.