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Running In The Family

Michael Ondaatje

Rating: 3.5/5.0

This non-fiction is a memoir of characters and tales of exotic land. Michael Ondaatje better known for his novels like the Booker prize winner The English Patient and Anil's Ghost does wonders in this poetic prose, the memoir about history of family as it follo-s him as memories, recollections, tales and myths. A quick clarification here is absolutely unavoidable that a memoir is not a biography as Jerry Jenkins states, memoir is the story of someone’s life establishing certain philosophy presented in a particular theme unlike biography which is purely someone’s life story chronicled in a certain sequence.

This proposes that the theme of any memoir has a special readership. This one is broader as it does not only speak about art of story telling, complex working of memory and remembrance but also portrays a poetic picture of a landscape.

The motif of journey therefore is not only in terms of age and time, it moves like a snake crawling through the unfamiliar places stopping at the feet of different people looking around at them, through them, with them. Characters therefore become most real owing to their proximity to the narrative voice of the author but at the same time they are prototypes: married couple, old aunt, lonely uncle, and all-encompassing father figure.

The entire memoir is a poem dedicated to Ondaatje’s parents and “the silence surrounding their marriage". The pictures snapshots of family clicks, the chapters named over familiar and exotic places spread all around and the excerpts of poetry makes it fluid.

What stands out and what may hamper the readers: the memoir narrated is in poetic prose and hence then stories are sometimes distinguished free floating images and metaphors which readers may not be able to string in a chain. What is the most unique feature? It is a man taking vacation into this past through the holidays he is spending in his family’s country, marked by their presence and departure.

BaSila Hasnain

12-09-2020