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Michael Ondaatje, Running In The Family

Michael Ondaatje’s autobiographical novelRunning in the Family is an imaginative reconstruction of the author’s family history. A mixture of fact and fiction, the novel chronicles Ondaatje’s attempt to gain insight into his own identity by better understanding his parents and relatives.

In the novel Ondaatje returns to Ceylon for the first time since his childhood in order to meet relatives and learn about his family. The novel consists of stories about Ondaatje’s aristocratic family interspersed with accounts of Ondaatje’s experiences while visiting Ceylon. As the novel progresses, the reader learns that Ondaatje left Ceylon to live with his mother in England and that his father, who remained in Ceylon, has died in his absence. It becomes increasingly clear that Ondaatje’s desire to understand his family is at bottom a desire to know and understand his father. His lack of knowledge about his father is an empty space in his identity and this emptiness haunts him throughout the novel.

As he meets various friends and relatives and listens to their stories Ondaatje struggles to understand his father’s life and his father’s relationship with his mother. He also struggles to put to rest fears he has about his father’s character. Ondaatje hears stories about his father’s wildness and drunkenness, about his mother’s dramatic flair, about his parents’ arguments, and about the circumstances surrounding their divorce. He comes to realize that while these exaggerated and contradictory stories capture the spirit of the 1930’s generation of aristocrats in Ceylon, they tell him nothing of what he really wants to know, nothing of his father’s thoughts and experiences, nothing of “the closeness between two people,” of how his parents “grew in the shade of each other’s presence.” In the end, Ondaatje recognizes that his father will remain “one of those books we long to read whose pages remain uncut.” Ondaatje can rely upon only faith and imaginative insight as means of understanding his father and of filling the empty space in his own identity.

Running in the Family has been appreciated for its striking imagery as well as for its carefully crafted prose. Although it was initially criticized for failing to address the political realities in Ceylon, the novel has since been accepted as an evocative depiction of the relationship between one’s identity and one’s family history.

“Running in the Family – Summary” Society and Self, Critical Representations in Literature Ed. David Peck. eNotes.com, Inc. 1997 eNotes.com 16 Apr, 2018 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/running-family#summary-the-work>

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The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, by Yann Martel

Two of the stories in The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios are merely sophomoric experiments in narrative style. “Manners of Dying” consists of nine versions of a letter from a prison warden to the mother of an executed man, detailing what he ate, how he reacted, whether he spoke to a minister, etc. It is a tedious conceit in questionable taste.

In “The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company,” a young man discovers his grandmother’s machine that creates mirrors out of memories. However, because he does not value those memories, he recounts them as “blah blah blah” on the left side of the page, giving his bored reactions on the right side. Predictably, the silly man in this silly story finally realizes that his grandmother was wiser than he thought.

The title story is a Boccaccio-inspired novella about a young man whose friend is dying of AIDS. To cope with grief and despair, they create a game whereby they make up stories about the invented Roccamatio family living in Helsinki. The “facts” are chosen from history for each year of the twentieth century, and the reader becomes so interested in them that the slow death of the young friend seems sadly secondary.

Perhaps the most engaging story, because less beset by cheap tricks (except for the title), is “The Time I heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton.” A young Canadian man goes to a memorable concert by a group of Vietnam veterans in Washington, D.C., and afterwards has a revealing conversation with the composer, a night janitor.

However, generally, these are amateurish literary games by a writer trying to find a successful narrative gimmick, which he does in Life of Pi (2001).

“The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios” Critical Survey of Contemporary Fiction Ed. Frank Northen Magill. eNotes.com, Inc. 2005 eNotes.com 15 Apr, 2018 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/facts-behind-helsinki-roccamatios#summary-facts-behind-helsinki-roccamatios-1>

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Julie Garwood, Murder List

There are few authors who can weave nail-biting thrills, edge-of-your-seat drama, and romantic suspense as masterfully as Julie Garwood. Now she ratchets up the tension with Murder List, in which evil is on the hunt– and proves to be methodically organized and chillingly successful.

When Chicago detective Alec Buchanan is offered a prime position with the FBI, it is the perfect opportunity to leave the Windy City and follow in his brothers’ footsteps to the top echelons of law enforcement. But first he must complete one last assignment (and one that he is not too happy about): acting as a glorified bodyguard to hotel heiress Regan Hamilton Madison. The gorgeous exec has become entangled in some potentially deadly business. Someone has e-mailed her a graphic crime-scene photo–and the victim is no stranger.

Regan suspects that the trouble started when she agreed to help a journalist friend expose a shady self-help guru who preys on lonely, vulnerable women. In fact, the smooth-as-an-oil-slick Dr. Lawrence Shields may be responsible for the death of one of his devotees, which was ruled a suicide. Hoping to find some damning evidence, Regan attends a Shields seminar.

At the gathering, the doctor persuades his guests to partake in an innocent little “cleansing” exercise. He asks them to make a list of the people who have hurt or deceived them over the years, posing the question: Would your world be a better place if these people ceased to exist? Treating the exercise as a game, Regan plays along. After ten minutes, Shields instructs the participants to bring their sheets of paper to the fireplace and throw them into the flames. But Regan misses this part of the program when she exits the room to take a call–and barely escapes a menacing individual in the parking lot.

The experience is all but forgotten–until the first person on Regan’s list turns up dead. Shock turns to horror when other bodies from the list start to surface, as a harrowing tango of desire and death is set into motion. Now brutal murders seem to stalk her every move–and a growing attraction to Alec may compromise her safety, while stirring up tender emotions she thought she could no longer feel. Yet as the danger intensifies and a serial killer circles ever closer, Regan must discover who has turned her private revenge fantasies into grisly reality.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,  hardcover  405 pages )

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Ralph Ellison, Living With Music

Before he became a writer, Ralph Ellison wanted to be a musician: ”I began trying to write in 1937 and finally gave up all hope of becoming a professional musician.” In ”Living With Music,” Robert G. O’Meally, the director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and a professor of comparative literature there, has collected music-related excerpts from Ellison’s essays, letters and interviews and his two novels, ”Invisible Man” and ”Juneteenth.” The collection shows that music informed, influenced and inspired Ellison’s writings, as well as his admiration for musicians ranging from Charlie Christian and Jimmy Rushing, whom he knew as a child in Oklahoma City, to Duke Ellington, whom he met while a student at Tuskegee. It matters not if it is jazz, blues or gospel; Ellison’s passion for music is evident. Whether he is writing a homage to Ellington on his 70th birthday, analyzing how the blues infuses Richard Wright’s autobiography or reviewing recordings of Mahalia Jackson, Ellison is insightful while keeping the focus on what role the music plays in American culture.

( Courtesy of  The New York Times,  hardcover  290 pages )