Running in the Family … is the bravest, gentlest and funniest of [Ondaatje's] nine books.
The text is centred around a long trip he recently made to [Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon], visiting those members of his family who remain there. Interspersed with his own experiences are chapters that forage through time to recreate the vanished world of his grandparents and parents. By entering the darkness of history, Ondaatje hopes against hope to bring his father to light. Opening the pages at random, the reader might come across a conversation, an essay, a poem, a journal or a tall tale. Ondaatje is an excellent raconteur, fond of spinning yarns, and his Ceylon suggests a cross between the Corfu of Gerald Durrell's childhood and the Colombia where Gabriel García Márquez grew up. Ondaatje lingers with relish on the incongruous details that take root in the imagination: a polecat that got drunk on yellow berries and wandered up and down on the keys of a piano; a grandmother who had a mastectomy by mistake and kept misplacing her false breast; a sudden epidemic of betting on the flights of crows. His emotions are constantly embedded in physical events; in particular, he has the rare gift of recreating in language a variety of smells. His words are as sensuous as mangoes.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Ondaatje, (Philip) Michael 1943–: Critical Essay by Mark Abley Access Pass.
