Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a charming, loving, beautifully written memoir of the Ondaatje family in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The author left his native country when he was 11 and returned after 25 years to immerse himself in the family history and to preserve it for his own family. Memories, memories of memories, and imagined memories blend with the sights, sounds, and smells of his childhood, thus reflecting one of the most powerful human urges—yearning to return to the past.

The recreation of the author's parents and grandparents' past is not linear; the book is a collection of vignettes written in poetic prose, reproductions of photographs, and even poems. The stories of the author's grandmother and of his father are captivating, and their portraits are so vivid that the reader has a feeling of knowing these extraordinary, if flawed, people.

Here's an evocative fragment of the last vignette: "My body must remember everything, this brief insect bite, smell of wet fruit, the slow snail light, rain, rain, and underneath the hint of colours a sound of furious wet birds whose range of mimicry includes what one imagines to be large beasts, trains, burning electricity. Dark trees, the mildewed garden wall, the slow air pinned down by rain. Above me the fan's continual dazzling of its hand. When I turn on the light, the bulb on the long three-foot cord will sway to the electrical breeze making my shadow move back and forth on the wall."


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