Anil's Ghost

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Summary: A most elusive world of phantoms
Review: Michael Ondaatje certainly has a gift for presenting elusive characters and situations, and none moreso than Anil and the Sri Lanka she chooses to return to. One is swept away by Ondaatje's flowing narrative. There is such a remarkable ease to his writing. However, upon closer inspection something seems to be missing.

Ondaatje doesn't seem to really get into the minds of his characters. They are more or less figurative pieces, almost poetic in nature, incapable of hard thought. However, Anil is supposed to be a forensic specialist so one expects more out of her. Her search for the identity of "Sailor" has all the allusions of being a self-exploratory search, but in the end we don't really find out much about Anil except a few odd facts. Ondaatje uses forensics more as a metaphor than an actual pallbearer for his ideas. Anil would have better served on a truth and reconciliation committee than in a special U.N. forensics team.

It leads me to wonder if Mr. Ondaatje actually found something upon his return to Sri Lanka, or rather chose to use this dystopic setting as a device for presenting his own disillusionment with the western world. The ending is too pat, indicating to me that Ondaatje grew tired and weary, much like Anil, who never seemed to come to terms with her "ghost."

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Summary: No escapism here
Review: Anil's Ghost is the perfect book to read at a time like this. It is so easy to use books as an escape from the cold strangeness of the world today but what better way to let our eyes be opened to what is happening all around us.

Ondaatje's wonderful writing, coupled with compelling subject matter lead me willingly into a completely unfamiliar world, but one I feel better for understanding. It also left me with the desire to learn more about the nature of struggles around the globe.

As a light-hearted foil to the seriousness of Anil's Ghost, I highly recommend Ondaatje's "Running in the Family", an autobiographical piece written after a long-postponed visit to his homeland of Sri Lanka.

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Summary: "Someone nudges a stone away, and there's a story."
Review: So says Sarath, explaining his love for his field. Sarath is the native anthropologist assigned by the government to work with Anil Tissera, sent by an international human rights organization to explore the horrendous killings occurring by both governmental and rebel groups in the island nation of Sri Lanka.

Anil was a former Sri Lankan who left the island at 18 and never looked back. She worked in England and the U.S., and eventually found her way back to her homeland, but only as part of the human rights team.

Anil and Sarath find a body of a man they call Sailor. This book is an exploration of how they go about figurign out what happened to this man, who he was, and what the government will do about their discovery. Along the way, Anil and Sarath discover a great deal of each other's pains and pleasures in their island home.

Anil's Ghost is lyrically written and tells a haunting story. Contained within the pages is a great deal of information on Sri Lanka, and the civil war in the nation. Haunting, and well recommended.

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Summary: Why?
Review: I have to say that when I bought this book I thought it would grab me from the first page, but sadly it didn't. It was extremely slow and too factual, most of it was in "past tense" and made me feel as if perhaps there was another book that I should have read before this one. Maybe it just wasn't my style. I was part of the small population of people who enjoyed "The English Patient". I feel like I let someone down for not finishing this book..

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Summary: Anil's Ghost
Review: I'm not certain I read the same book as the previous reviewers did. This book was so hard to follow that I forced myself to finish it. I actually came to this review site to see if others could shed some light on the story. It looks as though we all read the same book, just came away with different opinions. I don't wish to demean anyone's work, but I can honestly say I would not recommend this book to anybody.

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Summary: What makes a terrorist?
Review: Ondaatje gives a disturbing glimpse into a shattered world that
creates terrorists. This book feels very timely this month.

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Summary: Hauntingly crafted, Ondaatje's a 1st class poet
Review: Whenever you read anything by Michael Ondaatje you must remember that he is first and foremost a magnificent poet. The prose of Anil's Ghost is like satin sheets, delicate, smooth, sensual, sensuous, and hot and cool all at once. Read this book with a glass of wine and as much total quiet as you can find. Our protagonist is Anil Tissera, a Sri Lankan who has been in the US for 15 years studying and working as a forensic anthropologist. As part of an international human rights mission, she is called back to Sri Lanka to look further into murders suspected ordered by the government. This takes place in Sri Lanka during what, in South America, they called the dirty wars. The government was suspect, villagers disappeared regularly in the night never to be heard from again, and peasants were tortured to give up names of innocents to save their own necks.

Anil's discoveries are not so much the focus of the story, although we suspect what she suspects early on in the novel - when she finds recently deceased bodies in an ancient burial ground. What make this novel so captivating is that we are with her as she falls deeper and deeper into her need to identify "Sailor" - the body they (she is teamed with a Sri Lankan anthropologist, Sarath, who is tied to the political element somehow) are working on. In real life cases like this the desperation of the protagonists, in light of the overwhelming pressures against them by the government or other powerful entities, can be oppressive or maddening. In this novel, that quiet desperation is painted beautifully by Ondaatje's imagery, his careful brush strokes describing Anil's most inner feelings (she is at home, experiencing first hand the evil that her own people are doing to one and other). Funny, one reviewer writes, "...she finds herself caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy." But that makes it sound like a police mystery or an old cold war spy novel and it is eons away from these. This hauntingly crafted novel is a sheer pleasure to read, in spite of the heavy topics. I will read anything by Ondaatje.

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Summary: Captivating.... but very sad
Review: I liked Anil's ghost for several reasons, but I especially enjoyed the way it is written. Michael Ondaatje makes you get into the story with his descriptions of Sri Lanka and of people's feelings.His writings are like poetry, and I found that very enjoyable. I also liked and appreciated the fact that he did a lot of scientific, social and historical research for this book, which really comes through when you are reading.

Still, this isn't an easy book, because it covers many different stories, sad ones, and goes back and forth in time, but, if you let yourself go, and just give the book and the author a chance to take you into this marvelous trip throughout Sri Lanka, and the lives of its very shaken and frightened people, I am sure you will enjoy it.

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Summary: A fragmented, hopeless story.
Review: An ill-defined investigation into the identity of a murder victim's skeleton forms a shaky framework for "Anil's Ghost," a story of civil war-torn Sri Lanka. The story, such as it is, is told in disjointed bits, unrelated in time or place. This needn't have been a problem; many effective novels aren't linear. However, the scattered glimpses of people's pasts and characters that comprise "Anil's Ghost" are more just shards than functioning pieces of a larger whole.

This is a fragmented, hopeless story, and reading it was a chore. The only reason I'm not sorry to have spent the time on it is because I could, sometimes, appreciate how its (sort of) poetic style might appeal to another reader.By the work's end I was simply glad to have it over with. I'm not in a hurry to read more from Michael Ondaatje.

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Summary: This is not a book for everybody
Review: I like the movie "English Patient" very much. However,I totally agreed with what Angela Belt said. I found this book extremely boring.