Anil's Ghost

Rating:
Summary: Captivating book!
Review: The story is amazing! You find yourself transported to a far away country, to a forensic lab, to beautiful magical ruins. Reading this book you will be taken away in a spiritual trip to a country in the middle of a bloody civil war, and somehow you will filled with peace. This book is a movie written in the most beautiful words!

Rating:
Summary: Ondaatje Challenging Hollywod: Try This!
Review: This book was a nice break from my study of Hinduism and Buddhism. It brings one to the world of today's Sri Lanka. Ondaatje is completely capable of painting vivid images in our heads, yet the telling must be most challenging to the hollywood screen-writers that are likely trying to figure out how to adapt this story to film. It is difficult to imagine the translation/interpretation process will be easy. Some readers may find the story's characters of walking wounded too similar to the characters of the English Patient. Still it is a beautifully written story.

Rating:
Summary: Worth one and a half stars. Almost obscene in its fatuity
Review: This is supposedly a novel about the Sri Lankan civil war. In fact it is nothing of the kind. The novel does take place in Sri Lanka, there is certainly a war going on, with people being brutally murdered by at least three sides, and the characters are supposedly involved in trying to find out who is responsible for the corpse (known as "Sailor") they have found. But there is no discussion of why this war is going on. Sri Lanka is a democracy, yet there is no politics in the book. The characters are all upper middle class professionals but they are not politically conscious, not politically active, do not debate the course of the war, do not seriously discuss proposals how to end it, or seriously ponder about the fate of their unhappy country. The contrast with, say, V.S. Naipaul is striking in revealing Ondaatje's frivolous irresponsiblity.

But of course, if Ondaatje wrote a book which actually looked at the complex politics of the country where he was born in, he might lose the middlebrow readers who were so attracted to the orientalism and exoticism of "The English Patient." Ondaatje wrotes in a prose that is less lyrical than lush. And so we get a large amount of pretentious blather that can be confused for poetry. Note the drivel about truth, dream and secrets on page 259. Or consider these passages: "A paranoid is someone with all the facts, the joke went. Maybe this was the only truth here." (54) "We are full of anarchy. We take our clothers off because we shouldn't take our clothers off." (138) "But in the midst of such [traumatic] events, she realized, there could never be any logic to the human violence without the distance of time. For now it would be reported, filed in Geneva, but no one could ever give meaning to it." (57) Consider this last passage, a textbook example of what's wrong with this book. It is not simply a good example of false profundity. It is actually false. One can think of many contemporary writers who are capable of giving meaning to this sort of violence. If not perfect, writers as varied as Gordimer, Coetzee, Rushdie, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos, Naipaul, Sebald, Morrison and Appelfeld certainly do a substantially better job than Ondaatje.

So what do we see in this novel about forensic scientist Anil Tissera and her colleagues as they ruminate about their lives? Well, we have a few scenes of soft-core exoticism, and there is a fashionable suggestion of incest. There are some scenes from the war which may be more powerful if they were actually accurate. The brutal assassination at the end of the novel is supposedly a historical event, but the victim's real name is not given. There is no real discussion of the motive of the crime, or even the identity of the people who murdered one of the main characters. There is an interesting scene in which a kidnapped and blindfolded man is awkwardly forced to ride along with the captor on the latter's bicycle.

Ondaatje also brings in details about forensics, with limited results. We learn that if shrapnel flies through you from a bomb explosion and you are not killed or wounded, you should be all right because the heat of the explosion would have sterilized the shrapnel. We also learn that the shock wave of an explosion can flip your stomach over. One of the few scenes that show any life is a discussion Anil and a friend of hers has other wounds in movies. Is the shooting of John Ireland in "Red River" anatomically accurate? But Ondaatje is too pompous a writer to let this rare example of humour pass, and soon we see a letter about a shooting in "Point Blank," filled with all sorts of portentousness. And several times "The bone of choice would be the femur" is pompously repeated. Oh yes, Anil's friend is a lesbian and she suffers from Alzheimer's. About midpoint through the novel we learn that Anil was previously married, not to anyone really deserving of her affection. The sex was great, but they weren't really compatible and he cried too easily. I swear that is an accurate summary. It is at this point that one realizes that not only is this book simply playing at politics. It is also playing at love, emotion, moral complexity and any other concept deserving of sustained criticale examination. What makes this book so particulary contemptible is that many readers may believe that Ondaatje's rhetoric on these subjects is the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: Yawn....
Review: I really detested the movie "The English Patient", but I realize that books are almost always superior to the movies, so I thought I would give this book a chance.
Anil's Ghost has the potential to be a very interesting book. I thought the subject matter and the characters would be very compelling and interesting. Alas, I was wrong. The book plods along endlessly, with excruciatingly slow plot development and very poor character development. I often felt that the author had put a lot of emphasis on writing prettily, rather than writing well.
Avoid wasting your time with this book, and look into Mary Wesley, for a bit of GREAT writing.

Rating:
Summary: My two cents...
Review: Ok. I don't write a lot of reviews. I usually only feel compelled to review a book I've read when I have really felt strongly about it one way or another. I recently read Icy Sparks and felt I had to tell everyone I ever meet that they must read that book! However, after this one I feel I must warn everyone of the dangers of slipping into a coma if it is read. I didn't like the English Patient, so I am not sure why I read this book. I knew Ondaatje was an accomplished and awarded writer so I thought I would give this novel a chance in spite of the English Patient. I wish I hadn't. I have never been so bored with a book in my life. I never got pulled into the characters... I felt like I was being lulled to sleep by the words. I never sympathized with the story and about half way through I didn't really even care what was going to happen. I felt like stopping altogether but I was just sure the story HAD to get more compelling at some point. It didn't. Not for me. There were so many sides stories and subplots that just didn't connect or make sense to the main story. The whole entire story of Anil and Sailor could have been wrapped up in about 100 pages. It felt to me like this was a short story that was lengthened to novel length for the sake of publishing. I did enjoy the forensic archeology story. Ondaatje should have left it at that and concentrated on discovering Sailor's identity and left the rest of the subplots entirely out of the book. They didn't add to the story - as a matter of fact they distract the reader tremendously.

Maybe Michael Ondaatje's writing style just isn't for me. I don't know. But I do know that I did not enjoy this book and would not recommend it to anyone. I will not be reading any more Ondaatje books either. There are just too many others out there that are worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful imagery, but a meandering mess
Review: Perhaps Michael Ondaatje is more of a poet than a novelist, as his eleven books of poetry (compared with four novels) might suggest. Or perhaps I am just not a fan of his narrative style, which involves multiple characters and viewpoints, coupled with frequent and lengthy lapses into the past. All I know is that while listening to the audio version of Anil's Ghost over the past week and a half, I was frequestly lost and contemplated giving up.

The book is set in modern Sri Lanka, a country ripped apart by civil war, in which families endlessly seek word of their missing fathers, sons or brothers who have mysteriously disappeared amidst the chaotic violence. Protagonist Anil Tessera is an anthropologist and a native Sri Lankan, U.S. educated, who returns home as part of a human rights organization trying to identify the remains of victims and chronicle human rights violations.

One body in particular fascinates Anil and her partner Sarath, a skeleton they nickname "Sailor" who was apparently tortured and killed about 4 years ago, and then reburied in an area in which only the government might have had access. Although the government's role in the killings seems obvious to the reader, apparently Anil and Sarath believe that Sailor might provide important proof in the government's participation in the bloodshed. Therefore, the search for Sailor's true identity passes for mystery in this novel, amidst Ondaatje's trademark murky flashbacks, evocative settings and short glimpses of very poetic prose. However this great mystery is not terribly satisfying when ultimately solved, since Ondaatje doesn't bother letting readers know exactly how our protagonists identified Sailor.

There are memorable scenes to be sure, such as flashbacks of Anil's days in the U.S. watching old movies with her friend and trying to rationalize the bulletwounds received by characters in western movies, or present-day scenes of Anil and Sarath bathing in remote Sri Lanka lakes and stumbling across tortured drivers on the roadway. The problem is the scenes don't go anywhere - the author spends so much time drifting back into the pasts of slight characters, the reader (or in my case listener) loses interest and frequently forgets exactly who is being discussed. (ie are we discussing the past of Sarath's brother Gamini, a doctor kidnapped from his family and forced to care for rebels a la Dr. Zhivago, or is this chapter still about Sarath's mentor Palipana - and who cares?).

...

If you loved the novel The English Patient, and didn't mind frequent passages where the author uses the male pronoun and you have no idea to whom he is referring, than this may be the novel for you. To make matters worse here, narrator Alan Cumming used virtually the same voice for every character in the novel, male and female, which often added to my confusion. Maybe the novel works better in a few longer sittings, as opposed to frequent half hour intervals which comprise my commute, but I ultimately found Anil's Ghost an occasionally mesmerizing, but ultimately aimless tale.

Rating:
Summary: horrific events and characters who inspire hope
Review: Ondaatje writes about horrific events but he sets them side by side with characters so compelling, sympathetic and filled with goodness that you can't help but feel that the world, although sad and frightening, is a hopeful place. I loved that about The English Patient and I loved that about Anhil's Ghost.

Rating:
Summary: A Different Kind Of Murder Mystery
Review: Anil, an Americanized Sri Lankan, returns to her homeland as a forensic specialist representing a Geneva-based human rights organization. This story has some of the same feel, but is a more pocket-sized version of "The English Patient", at least in simplicity of story-line. Actually I liked it better than "English Patient" because it was more straightforward in its presentation and appeared to be an attempt to educate the public about the unholy mess that is Sri Lankan politics.

The story evolves around the relationship of Anil with her locally-assigned counterpart, whom she sometimes suspects as being too closely tied to the government. Through the voices of the various characters that Anil encounters in her search to identify the remains of a murdered unknown, the true horror of the government/insurgent/counter-insurgent struggle unfolds.

The book ends with somewhat of a jolt, but nevertheless leaves one with a sense of completion and a bit of hope.

Rating:
Summary: Almost great
Review: A fun read, but it's missing... something.
In the Skin of a Lion is Ondaatje's best. English Patient is really good, too, as are some of his other books.
Here's a book that has his same techniques, but this one never quite pulls together the same way. It almost does, but no. If you like Ondaatje, pick this one up. If you don't, well, you wouldn't be looking at this review if you didn't like Ondaatje, right...

Rating:
Summary: unsatisfying
Review: I'm a fan of Ondaatje's and looked forward to this book very much. The story was gripping and intriguing, but it deteriorated as the book went along. Characters were introduced in passing and then picked up 50 or 100 pages later, forcing you to page back and remember what you'd already read about them. The main character was pretty unsympathetic. She spends the book pursuing the idealistic goal of uncovering a governmental murder and cover-up (and presumably bring the perpetrators to justice) but ultimately her quest merely leads to another senseless death.

The ending was a huge rip-off - the story wraps up in too few pages and the last passage was a retread of earlier material in the book. I didn't even make it all the way to the end.