I heart Michael Ondaatje

Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
New York: Knopf, 2000

I went through a Canadian phast in my late high school years. While this was largely due to a certain hockey player, it also included a love affair with Ondaatje's The English Patient (both novel and film) and Joy Kogawa's Obasan. I had dreams of moving to Vancouver and having a big dog and taking him on walks to Stanley Park. All of which is introduction, of sorts, to the Canadian Ondaatje's 2000 novel about his native Sri Lanka.

I read it in Denver, and the cold weather and warm family atmosphere made for a gripping counterweight to the book's sultry temperatures and political chill. You understand why Anil left for England, America, etc., and work to understand why she returned to practice forensic anthropology, investigating the murders and atrocities committed by political factions within and against the government. You also work to understand the two brothers who accompany her, one an anthropologist, one a doctor, both destroyed both by their own pasts and the turmoil of their country.

It's hard to say that a lot happens, in the traditional sense of the word. I found myself thinking, well this is where I would go with this plot, and then remembering that Ondaatje is a lot less trite or more interesting than I can be. His prose is lyrical and haunting and quiet and disjointed and all sorts of other good things. Had I not been on vacation, I might have noted passages to share; instead you will have to take my word for it.

In short, he's gorgeous, and I was unsettled and unsatisfied in an entirely satisfying way.