Anil's Ghost

Rating:
Summary: I must have missed something here...
Review: I loved "The English Patient". I really hoped this would be just as mesmerizing. Instead, "Anil's Ghost" starts out interesting, building up the mystery for half the book regarding the skeleton dubbed "Sailor", but then fizzles. The last half was ssslllloooowwww, confusing, elaborating on stuff that didn't matter, and spun away from (what I thought was) the main story/mystery. At the end I found I just wanted it over and I didn't really care what happened. Sorry. Really wanted to like it. Can't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Book With No Focus
Review: Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" is one of my favorite books so I really expected to like "Anil's Ghost." Instead, I was very disappointed.

I like episodic books but "Anil's Ghost" is fragmented and the story has no focus whatsoever. Ondaatje leads us to believe the story centers around a skeleton dubbed "Sailor" and the Sri Lankan government's cover-up of recent murders. This would have been interesting but Ondaatje lets Sailor's story trail off and almost be forgotten while nothing compelling takes its place.

The characters aren't at all likable (Sarath may be the easiest to care about) and none of them have any depth at all. In fact, they're little more than cardboard cutouts or shadows that flit through the narrative. Several of the minor characters (Leaf, in particular) are downright horrid.

Although Anil is the protagonist of this book, Ondaatje fails to keep the focus on the story on her and the end of the book is murky and totally unsatisfying.

While "The English Patient" was a rich and beautiful book with fully-developed characters, "Anil's Ghost" reads more like an outline or a first draft than an actual book. It's thin, sketchy and leaves the reader frustrated. I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe I'm just not 'literary' enough
Review: Damn, this was a really hard read. The writing is absolutely beautiful, but 80% of the time I had no idea what this obviously gifted, much venerated and acclaimed author was talking about. Even now that I've finished it, I don't know what I just read. It just seems like it ought not to be necessary to write a book in such an ambiguous way in order to be labeled 'a terrific writer.' And I swear I'm not smokin' anything.
I guess I'd have to advise others to take a pass.

Rating:
Summary: "Truth" - is it really out there?
Review: I love this novel. I read it two years ago in a university English class that looked at postmodern concepts and specifically how history is written - how it is written and thought to be the truth when it is really nothing more than interpretation. There is no ultimate truth to history only a few facts burried among the many fictions. And that is what this novel is about - the uncovering of fact among fiction and the reality that what you discover is not a "universal truth" but rather a personal "truth", one developed from your own interpretation.
I think Ondaatje is a magnificent writer and this is the novel that made me fall in love with him. Anil is a woman who, like many women, is unsure of where she stands in life. She was born in Sri Lanka but educated in Britian and assimilated herself into Western culture. Now, returning to her home country, her focus on the corpse is not so much about wanting to know the truth behind it's origin, but rather about her wanting to know more about her origin; wanting to know about the place that originally created her; the place that lives in her even when she tries to deny it.
My advice: read this book. Take your time with it and think of it as an exploration into human identity and how fact, fiction, history and place all contribute to that identity. Also, check out his other work, especially his poems. They're fabulous!

Rating:
Summary: The periphery of a civil war
Review: Michael Ondaatje has brilliantly evoked the horrors of the civil war in his native Sri Lanka by focusing on the people not directly involved in the war but nonetheless affected by it on a deep, personal level. Anil Tissera returns to her native Sri Lanka as a Western forensic anthropologist charged with investigating accusations of war crimes. Although she works for an international human rights group, she is on her own, except for the Sri Lanka government appointed anthropologist Sarath whose loyalties and motives are unknown and therefore suspect. When Anil and Sarath come into possession of several skeletons, one of which they nickname Sailor, they realize they have evidence of government atrocities. Now, through their clandestine scientific work, they must prove it. As they delve deeper into their investigation, they encounter others who bring their own stories to the novel.

Although Ondaatje primarily follows the lives, both past and present, of Sarath and Anil, the most powerful - and in the end the most memorable - character is Gamini, Sarath's younger brother and a doctor at the Colombo hospital. His presence in the book provides the balance necessary to see beyond the specific incident involving Sailor and into the greater arena of a country torn apart by violence. Ananda, too, provides an intriguing yet murky layer as the eye-painter, a man trained in the sacred art of painting eyes on statues of the gods.

Written in clear, straightforward prose, the narrative itself is non-linear, moving through time as it explores the complexity of the characters. Despite the structure, readers should find the novel easy to follow. This is not a dense, lyrical novel; the poetry here resides in brief, intimate moments that the author allows the reader to glimpse.

The power of this work derives from the varied lives that touch upon Anil's investigation. Although the novel could have been developed more completely, it leaves a lasting impression that only the best writing can achieve. I wavered between giving it four or five stars, but, because I can't stop thinking about the book, I decided it deserved my top rating.

If you are looking for something upbeat, obviously you should avoid this book. Readers of literary, political, and international fiction will find a true treasure in these pages.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful in parts, dissonant as whole
Review: Having missed out on "The English Patient" I wanted to catch up on Ondaatje with this book. I was disappointed, and below is why. The main characters, Anil (a forensic researcher educated in the west and dispatched to Sri Lanka by a human rights organization to investigate disappearances of Sri Lankans), Sarath (a native Sri Lankan archeologist assigned to work with Anil), and Gamini (brother of Sarath who is an MD), in my view, all failed to develop into concrete characters. Don't get me wrong, I found Ondaatje's prose beautiful. There were beautiful passages describing past (as opposed to the ongoing storyline, which was to identify the identity of a certain corpse) experiences of each of the characters. The problem I had was connecting any one past experience to another of the same character. It gave me the sense that the characters were manufactured, as the union of experiences that have no intersection. This was most pronounced in Anil -- I never understood her drive to uncover the identity of the corpse. In the same vein I found the novel's reference to the Sri Lankan civil war also unsatisfactory. Other than the landscape the author portrayed, there were no particular, intrinsic reason linking why the background of the novel should be Sri Lanka at all. Throughout the novel the war remained "anonymous," with no specific characteristics of its own, serving as a backdrop that justified the ongoing violence.

Rating:
Summary: Not bowling for Colombo
Review: Anil's Ghost is set in Sri Lanka. From the mid 1980's to the early 1990's government and anti-government insurgents were fighting in the south of the country and separatist guerillas were fighting in the north. Anil Tissera returns to Sri Lanka after fifteen years' absence. She is a forensic anthropologist working for a Geneva-based human rights organization. She was a champion swimmer in her youth, but wants that fact forgotten. She is paired with an archaeologist, Sarantha Diyasena.

In training at Guys Hospital in London she read in a textbook that the bone of choice is the femur. She finds it rather remarkable that everything starts with the thigh bone! When she worked in sparse high-tech desert towns in the U.S. the workers in the lab listened to rock and roll music by day and spent evenings going to bowling alleys where drinks were served. They bowled robustly and drunkenly to overcome the stench and emotions associated with death.

The story is set amid immensely tragic events. Anil comes to the scene from overseas and she is warned that she is in considerable danger. She is also warned that in the three sides of the dispute, everything is murky and painful. In order to do her work, suitable tools are not available. It is said that only weapons are high-tech.

A recently disposed of skeleton is found in an area of archaeological significance protected by the government, it is an old mass tomb or burial area in a cave. It is determined the body has been buried twice. Through soil analysis and entomological analysis the geographical area of the first burial site is gauged. An artist is hired to reconstruct the head. The artist tries to kill himself subsequently and is saved by Anil. The artist had become an alcoholic and mine worker after his wife disappeared in the troubles three years earlier.

Recreation of the head permits identification of the skeleton. He was one of many persons killed by the government, but the government will not consider this and the government representatives are inclined to dispute Anil's findings. A further frustration is that the skeleton has been stolen. I leave the story here for the reader to wrap up on his own. The book is splendid. Retelling a few of the points of the plot barely scratches the surface.

Rating:
Summary: Civil War Without, Civil War Within
Review: Beautifully written, poetic rendition of Sri Lanka being torn apart by civil war-subtexted in how individual's lives being ripped asunder one way or another. Very delicately nuanced descriptions of how various characters shut out the world to maintain balance and focus. Ondaatdje writes in a somewhat detached way-I felt I was viewing pain from a distance, not experiencing it with the characters-but lovely nevertheless. A reflective book from multiple POVs...I for one think Sarath was more of the central character than Anil.

Rating:
Summary: One moment in every novel....
Review: I wish to write a lengthier review and rehash the plot but I have forgotten a large part of this novel. This brings me to an important point - there are some novels whose main plots recedes, and even to some degree, so do the characters, but the novel lingers in your head because of one moment where the images created by the author is burnt into your memory. This makes for a powerful reading experience. I am going to recommend Anil's Ghost on this basis.

In The Skin of a Lion (also by Ondaatje), someone mentioned that the novel should be read because it has the most amazing love-making scene (that person was correct). It fused passion, lust, and poetry into one. In Sophie's Choice (William Styron), it was the image of post-war, post-choice Sophie sitting under the stars at an amphitheatre with music resounding in her head. I hope that everyone perusing this review would have had one of those moments in their reading experience.

Michael Ondaatje created the most powerful and poignant image in Anil's Ghost that I still dream about and recall at odd moments. It is at the very end where a restoration takes place. I am reluctant to say anything more. (I'm sorry if it seems like a "bad" description - and a "bad" review, to say anything more would diminish it)

I hardly ever recommend books on the basis of one particular moment in a novel. However, I have always walked away from a novel with a satisfied mind if it moved me in the least. This scene - it has to be imagined, to be lived, and to be read so that you know what it means to possess a fragment of a writer's soul, and to understand the persistence of hope for any country ravaged by brutality and violence.

Rating:
Summary: Ondaatje takes a breather.
Review: Michael Ondaatje writes beautiful prose in which descriptions of ordinary moments take on the intensity of an epiphany though the understanding which we expect to accompany an epiphany is not there. One such moment remembered by readers of 'The English Patient' is the description of the nurse washing the burn patient: Is she a nurse or a lover? Is it a caress that causes such excruciating pain?

'Anil's Ghost' is the story of a forensic anthropologist who returns to Sri Lanka to disinter and investigate the death of a single unidentified body. Is the grave new or old? Was the death natural or contrived? Was he political? Who was he? Anil's research efforts are a political act with large implications. There are so many recent unmarked graves in Sri Lanka, there are so many loved ones disappeared, that identification of this one person, who may be insignificant in and of himself, implies the ability to identify others, perhaps to assign responsibility and to trigger an orgy of retribution.

As in 'The English Patient' we are treated to a mixture of interior and exterior dialogue, a mixture of presence and remembrance, and the main character's confusion of herself with her work. This book does not have the complexity or depth of 'The English Patient', but it is well done and contains truly beautiful writing.