Rating: 
Summary: Anil alienated me
Review: Anil's Ghost sounded great: complicated characters, exotic locale, twisting plot, puzzle to be solved. However, the characters are all so estranged (and to be frank, strange) that it is difficult to care about them. Instead of pulling together to weather the strife of civil war, these characters, and the communities they inhabit, withdraw and hide from danger and uncertainty. Michael Ondaatje succeeds in making me feel a bit of the anxiety and uncertainty of the Sri Lankan experience, but at the cost of engaging me in the story. I got the point, but don't want to do anything with it. Ondaatje can sure turn a phrase, and he can capture a mood like no one else. If you're a serious word person, who reads for love of language, or if atmosphere alone is enough for you, don't miss this novel. On the other hand, if you're a recreational reader who enjoys a linear story, Anil's Ghost isn't for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Specters and Secrets
Review: I am an avid Ondaatje fan, and this book fulfilled my expectations. Once again, the author has created a haunting tale of loss and memory, a tale inhabited by living phantoms who each must come to grips with his or her own ghosts. Set against a background of mysterious disappearances and the violence of Sri Lankan conflicts, this novel touches both the personal and the political, yet remains intensely intimate as it explores the lives of its three central characters--an archeologist, a doctor, and a forensic specialist. Ondaatje's sparse and suggestive style adds a mystic dimension. One of the year's best reads.
Rating:
Summary: The real Sri Lanka
Review: This book is Michael Ondaatje's portrayal of passion for his native Sri Lanka. It is a brilliant maze of ethnic war, archaeology, forensic science, Buddhist art and culture, all woven into the story of Anil Tissera. A young forensic pathologist who shares her cultural and filial ties with Sri Lanka but not its' political and social affirmations. Ondaatje cleverly spins the web of a war that devours its people, and drives Anil into a deep dark pit of ethno-political uncertainty. Anil's only aim is to use her forensic skills to prove a silent killing. While she digs for the truth, she discovers her cultural and nationalistic roots. Sarath Diyasena the archaeologist, seeking the same truth through the eyes of the historical past and his brother Gamini, the doctor, the voice of reality, who dissolves history and science for a more gory blood-stained truth. The thread that links them is the passion for their profession. This driving passion is their survival in an unworkable system. In his poetic genius, Ondaatje describes modern day Sri Lanka as it is. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: A stunning achievement
Review: Michael Ondaatje is one of the most extraordinary writers of our time. This is one of the most stunning, perplexing, and beautiful novels I have ever read. Anil's story and the pursuit of her ghost grabs you on page one and carries you straight through to the final sentence. Ondaatje manages to examine a place so foreign that it has escaped the notice of the Western psyche. His novel , at times disturbing and violent, crackles with danger and suspense. It educates you on the political tensions in Sri Lanka while drawing into the deep waters of the struggle for good against senseless evil. If you don't read this book you are missing an important and unique piece of literature.
Rating:
Summary: Scary, challenging, dense
Review: The Civil War in Sri Lanka is not one that has impinged much on Western consciousness, so a novel dealing with that issue by a writer like Ondaatje is worth checking out for the topic alone. Of course, while the plot deals with a Sri Lankan born forensic anthropologist returning to her homeland to investigate human rights abuses on behalf of an international human rights group, there is much more to this novel than that. Issues such as; the impact of family relationships upon its individual members, the desire of people both to hide and unlock the past, and the way in which love (in various forms) can influence our actions, are all important to the novel. Two other issues stood out for me. Near the end of the novel we read, 'It's probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.' Were the emphasis is on the westerner leaving the place they are writing about, as if the issue is thus ended. I can think of a number of books and films that fit the pattern, thus the critique is quite telling. We can be quite xenophobic, Ondaatje's comments are interesting in relation to the fact that he too is writing a novel on events in another place. Secondly, the novel deals with issues of truth. While one of the central characters initially says, 'Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion' it is later said of him, 'he would have given his life for the truth if the truth were of any use'. It is encouraging to see a writer, describing a world where misinformation and covering up truth are a fact of life, acknowledging that there is a place for recognising it's existence. This is a very dense and intense novel and obviously not for everyone. No doubt much more could and, hopefully, will be said on this topic. However, "Anil's Ghost" is an excellent starting point.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully complex read!
Review: I'm mystified by the range of positive and negative reviews of this book, but they are in perfect keeping with the responses of my book group, who read "Anil's Ghost" and had similarly disparate opinions. Some people found the narrative confusing and boring. I have to say that I found this to be one of the better books we've read. Michael Ondattje is an absolutely gorgeous writer --his use of words is poetic and I found the intersection of various timelines to be fascintaing rather than befuddling. This is a book that explores the nature of life in a time of crisis and war. The truth becomes a slippery slope, and even the purest of sciences can lie to and betray you at times. Personal and societal histories intertwine in ways that cause everyone to have a slightly (or even dramatically) different perception of events. Ondaatje trusts his readers to be intelligent beings who are capable of drawing their own conclusions about motivations, rationales, and final outcomes. Obviously, this open-ended approach to writing fiction drives people who prefer things explicitly explained in every particular completely insane. But, if you're the type of reader who enjoys books that explore the complexity of life's intricate design, I'm guessing you'll love "Anil's Ghost." The parallels, metaphors, and subtlties of the narrative will mesmerize and, yes, even haunt you.
Rating: 
Summary: try again some other time
Review: I did not love the film version of "The English Patient" but I did love the book for illuminating a tragic and complex political situation (which mostly did not survive the screenwriter). "The English Patient" was poetic and complex and absorbing and smart. My best friend loved "Anil's Ghost" and I expected to love it too. I didn't. I am shown a bloody mess but given no way to make sense of it. I understand more about the situation in Sri Lanka from reading the reviews than from this novel. Ondaadji takes great pains to make his point that there is no point to the war in his country, and thus has little new to offer those of us who already regard warfare as inherently pointless. What is at stake for Anil, for the people she meets, for this nation? Whose story am I to connect to? Each character is completely passive in the face of all this monstrous history so that I cannot care about any of them. I generally enjoy drifting narrative and shifts in time and point of view. But ultimately here, what? Sri Lanka is a bloody mess and life goes on? Yes, I suppose that's it. Sometimes a book doesn't work for a particular reader at a particular time. I admire the lyricism and skill of the author enough to try reading "Anil's Ghost" again later. But if the publication of this novel had been left to me today, I would send it back to its maker. Maybe that would have been a pity because some people apparently love it. It has received more stars than I can offer from readers who did not even finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. You have to savor every word.
Rating: 
Summary: Anil's Black Hole of Boredom
Review: I really wanted to like this book. I tried hard, but couldn't. In fact, I didn't even finish it. It's slow and boring. But I have finished many slow and boring books in my lifetime. I stopped this one because I really didn't even care what happened with Anil or any of the characters. I just didn't care.
Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening novel
Review: Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, takes us to Sri Lanka in his work, Anil's Ghost, where his languid, luscious prose allows us to feel the horrors of civil war. Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights organization, returns to her island homeland to help locate the source of terrorism and mass murders. Anil finds her life entwining with the lives of two brothers. Gamini, sickly with diphtheria as a child, who becomes a medical doctor and Sarath, the elder sibling, who steers away from his father's law firm, and learns archaelology. The brothers seem to symbolize a country caught up in strife. Sarath studies under the famous archaeologist, Palipana, whose work is discredited when no evidence can be found of the ancient texts he used in his own publications. The narrator suggests that "...perhaps for him [Palipana], it was not a false step but the step to another reality, the last stage of a long, truthful dance" (p. 81). "In the last few years he had found the hidden histories, intentionally lost, that altered the perspective and knowledge of earlier times. It was how one hid or wrote the truth when it was necessary to lie" (p. 105). Palipana's work becomes a metaphor for the chaos and confusion of Sri Lanka's intense and protracted internal struggle. An eye-opening novel.
|
