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Oct 15, 2010

Eric rated it:

Ondaatje’s family is as mythically crazy as Garcia-Marquez’s fictional Buendia clan. His father in particular—an epic binger, gin hole, naked hijacker of trains, and participant in elaborate, picturesque feuds:

And there was Lalla too, like a bee attracted to the perfume of any flower, who came up every other week solely to ransack the garden and who departed with a car full of sprigs and branches. With hardly any room to move or stretch, she rode back to Colombo, still as a corpse in

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Jun 08, 2011

K.D. rated it:

What a nice break from reading so many fiction books! This lyrical memoir of Michael Ondaatje is a must read of those who read and did not like his Booker-award winning novel The English Patient. In this book, I agree with Margaret Atwood said that he (Mr. Ondaatje) is at his agile and evocative best. This book is brightly colored, sweet and painful and legend-like. If you still doubt that Mr. Ondaatje is a gifted writer, read this memoir. Reading him here is akin to St. Thomas touching the Holy More...

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Mar 31, 2008

Samuel rated it:

In it's entirety:

"Memory and Texture in Running in the Family"

N.B.: This hasn't been proofread

Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family chronicles the history of a family in an unfamiliar land. To most readers of English, the names and places in Running in the Family will be unfamiliar, as good as fantasy—it might as well be Narnia or Middle Earth. This unfamiliarity dissipates slowly through the course of the novel, as the places and names become fa More...

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Dec 28, 2007

Patrick rated it:

Michael Ondaatje’s memoir Running In The Family is an unusual book. It isn’t a classic narrative; there are little episodes about his family, reports of his return to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the 70s, poems, and other anomalies. This book first came to my attention through Nick Hornby’s inspiring column in The Believer magazine called What I’m Reading. It’s really a quirky little book, but entertaining, heartfelt, and informative. He had a very colorful family. His father was an alcoholic who used More...

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Dec 17, 2009

Sab rated it:

A lovely tease of a book. Part memoir and part atmospheric poetry, each chapter hints at an event or anecdote from Ontdaaje's ancestors' lives in Sri Lanka. Generations of expats and patriots come and go, shown to the reader in brief glimpses and short chapters of prose or poetry. The writing is, as always, lyrical, evokative, clever and beautiful, but at the end I found I wanted more. Gorgeous hints at abiding and neurotic family dynamics that skim across the surface of a deeper story. Sometime More...

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Sep 15, 2008

Claudia F. rated it:

Dear Mr. Ondaatje,
You've got to stop writing such powerful, sexy books. You make me want to abandon everything and move to Ceylon. I have a terrible problem with mosquitoes. And, frankly, I become rather crazy in the heat. But, ohhhh, how you seduce. Grandmothers dying in floods, the drinking, the dancing, the sheer cliffs, the friendly snakes that might be your father. I want to hang out in the verdant fields with you and your family. I've never before found mine so ordinary.
sigh,

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2012

Laura rated it:

Another piece that I was required to read for my advanced nonfiction writing class. It was very different from the others (Maya Angelou and Geoffrey Wolff) in topic, writing style, and flow.

Running in the Family was difficult to read and dive into, at first. The writing style is disjointed and the timeline of the narrative jumbles and hops around. Within each section of chapters, the paragraph could begin with a story about the narrator's grandmother, and end with paddies and riding More...

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Sep 18, 2011

Emily rated it:

Ondaatje’s travel memoir, Running in the Family is, stylistically, probably one of the most unique pieces of writing I have ever encountered. I would compare it to a scrapbook or a collage. It brings together a medley of different mediums: stories, conversations, photographs, maps, poems, and more. Ondaatje sews these various mediums together beautifully to create a catalog of his family’s history. I envy this creative style and would love to try this sort of medium-mixing myself. I would recomm More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Cat rated it:

Very beautifully written. A fractured tale of memory, family, and place, and the struggle to vivify (and perhaps invent) the stories that make you who you are. The descriptions of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) are utterly transporting, and I love that Ondaatje begins with a tale of intoxication as jollity and nostalgia (basically: I got drunk and decided I needed to go back to Ceylon) and that gradually as his book unwinds, it becomes clear that alcoholism is one of the demons that dogs his family and that More...

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Apr 04, 2008

Tawny rated it:

Favorite lines:
1. "During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed."
2. "No story is ever told just once."
3. "There is so much to know and we can only guess. Guess around him. To know him from these stray actions I am told about by those who loved him. And yet, he is still one of those books we long to read whose pages remain uncut."

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Sep 27, 2011

Laura rated it:

Second book for a contemporary fiction course. An interesting blend of poetry & prose and family stories & memories. It took me a while to get into it and for the most part the sense behind the structure eluded me. The poems about the toddy tapper and the cinnamon peeler were great. I liked the meta-fictional moments where he writes about writing itself -- sometimes in Ceylon, sometimes at home again in Canada ("Now, and here, Canadian February, I write this in the kitchen ..."). This More...

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Nov 11, 2007

Amy rated it:

There were so many great elements in this book--exotic setting, interesting characters, dramatic events, poetic language (although the sections in verse seemed sort of, well, bad)--and yet somehow I could never get excited about it. Maybe something about the lack of...dramatic arc in the present narrative? I don't know. Maybe it was great. Maybe it was my fault. I just couldn't dance to it.

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May 17, 2009

Shelah rated it:

I'm always curious about authors' lives-- whether they're stable (and boring?) like mine, or turbulent (and exciting?). Based on the Ondaatje novels I've read, The English Patient, Anil's Ghost, Divisadero, and In the Skin of a Lion, I wouldn't have expected Ondaatje to grow up in a cookie-cutter suburb eating tv dinners and watching Donna Reed. And he didn't. Instead he spent the first twelve years of his life with family in Sri Lanka, where his parents both came from the Indo-European gentry. More...

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Jul 05, 2010

Q rated it:

Michael Ondaatje is one if my favorite writers. but this book didn't do it for me. it was the tone of the writing - an angst - disfinctional - disjoint- alcohol like enduced- a narcisitic edge - that didn't resonate for me. and yet being the craftsman Ondaatje is - i know all this was purposeful.

what a family! colorful yes - but not one we really want to come home to. not a lot of nurture. alot of party. and so casting the lens on his roots with the sticky odor of spices in the ai More...

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Aug 31, 2011

Paige rated it:

As an English major I was often asked, when people used to ask me such things, "who is your favorite author?". For many years after I graduated I told people Michael Ondaatje and that my favorite book was The English Patient by him. I first read this memoir by him and I enjoyed the luscious writing style so much that I read more. So this book has been sitting on my shelf for years. I pulled it out again and enjoyed taking time to savor it again.

Another reason to love this b More...

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Jun 29, 2009

Janey rated it:

I don't know what to make of this book. It's an account of generations of wild, impetuous, narcissistic people, colonials in an exotic location (Sri Lanka), behaving badly and then destructively, dying, divorcing, drinking, described with a distance, a dissociation, that makes them both part of the "I say, Old Chap" colonial tradition and a heartbreaking journey for a sensitive child of such people. I know why he wrote it: he puts these large characters in a shopcase and can look at th More...

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Apr 07, 2011

Monica rated it:

***Some may say that this review contains spoilers but since nothing really happened in this book (wait, was that a "spoiler"?) it is hard to say what a "spoiler" for this book is.

Ok. ok. I get it. Your dad was a drunk. But remember when he did that really funny thing? or not? Remember when he was so kind? or when he wasn't? Remember how intelligent he was? Or that really dumb thing he did? How horrible. How wonderful!

Ok. ok. I get it. Y More...

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Dec 02, 2008

Colleen rated it:

I had read bits of this book in a book of Ondaatje excerpts that Nick gave me for our first Christmas many moons ago. I saw this on his shelf and grabbed it to take to work with me because it was thin, he loves this author, and I was curious to read more. This book has a kind of peaceful mood about it. It definitely does not read like a linear novel, but is rather a collection of stories based on his family's oral tradition, poems, and memories. Sometimes the stories are more amusing than ot More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Matthew rated it:

Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family is definitely not your typical memoir; Ondaatje writes his return to Sri Lanka in such a way that fact and fiction are blended together so perfectly, coupled with a poetic prose and descriptions of an immaculate landscape. Running in the Family may only be 174 pages, but for such a small book it is bursting with life -- almost making you wish it just a bit longer.

Some people could be a bit turned off by the disjointed nature of the book as it More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Sebas rated it:

I had always thought of non fiction as something used only to learn. As if it couldn be funny. Then I started reading this book and that changed. Yes, this book is non-fiction, even though it seems fiction at some parts. This book tells the memoirs of a man (Michael Ondaatje, the author) that goes to Sri Lanks, his place of birth, to find out moreabout his parents and his (and their) past.
This was a good book. At some parts I felt like I wasnt sure who was talikng, or who were all those ch More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Susie rated it:

I absolutely love this book. Ondaatje is also a poet, and his prose often veers towards poetry - in a good way. I first read this book 10 years ago, and fell in love with it then. Rereading it recently - older, with a much greater understanding of the difficulties of parent-child relationships - reaffirmed my initial feelings about the book. It's a story of Ondaatje's family in Sri Lanka, mostly about his parents, but really, it's about his relationship (or lack thereof) with his father. Ultima More...

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Jul 04, 2011

Allyson rated it:

I love this author and The English Patient remains one of my favorite books. A rare book I am able to reread and enjoy as much each time.
This book is very lush and vivid, but odd. He creates a strange sense of his family, almost a dream remembrance and it reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez actually. Magic realism.
I thought i had read this in the past but realized I had not. Interesting but too short and undeveloped for a full picture of his family and Sri Lanka. A glancing glimp More...

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Jan 27, 2011

Noelle rated it:

This book is Ondaatje's account of returning to Ceylon / Sri Lanka, where he lived until the age of 11. It's an amusing and rich work full of experienced memories, inherited memories, and sensory impressions of Ceylon and Ondaatje's family there. It's scattered but cohesive, moving between accounts of Ondaatje's return to Ceylon, and tales of his family, who he does a great job bringing to life and presenting as complete, complex characters. My favorite parts are the brief poetic interludes ( More...

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Nov 02, 2010

Ryan rated it:

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje is one of the more unique novels I have read because it is literary nonfiction. In the novel, Ondaatje traces back to his roots in Sri Lanka, the "tear drop of India," and the family relationships (mostly family problems) he had. As a writer, I especially enjoyed reading the poems Ondaatje put into his novel to explain, artistically and literary, different aspects of his family's life. The novel, in places, was difficult to understand because More...

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Oct 06, 2010

Rachel rated it:

As anyone in IB at WPHS knows, this book was the worst thing you could draw during the English formal oral exam (so of course, I did draw it). Excluding the stress of trying to analyze this book for IB, I actually think that Michael Ondaatge's writing is very beautiful. If you allow the novel to sort of sweep over you and are not necessarily bothered with identifying plot devices, this book has both lovely and interesting poetry and prose as well as an intriguing family portrait and history snap More...

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Dec 26, 2011

Patricia rated it:

Another non-linear narrative here, a memoir that uses "memory" as an organizing structure (not forward action). The author mines memory: not only his own. I enjoyed it. Lots of beautiful sentences. Lots of metaphors. Lots of descriptions I wish I had written.

I keep counting the children, keep feeling I am missing one.

I am the foreigner. I am the prodigal who hates the foreigner.

Sweat runs with its own tangible life down a body as if a giant egg has More...

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Jun 19, 2009

Ann rated it:

This was quite a short one from Ondaatje -- a return trip through Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and writing about various colorful relatives. His eccentric father and the father's alcoholism is a big part of the story -- as are many of the antics the father gets up to.

Although parts of the book are amusing as told by Ondaatje, there is an overall sadness about a life lost, and memories of it found in the tropics and loss of homeland and extended family. Once again, I love the way he writes -- More...

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Oct 30, 2010

Nadia rated it:

Ondaatje's memoir of returning to Ceylon/Sri Lanka as an adult is poetic and poignant. Reading it felt like looking through a person's photo album as s/he recounts to you the story behind each photo, which is signature Ondaatje. In fact, Ondaatje starts many of his chapters with a family photo. The descriptions of the climate (rain, humidity, heat) and the geography (the exotic flowers, the sea) were somewhat transportive. It was a satisfying (and quick) read; it was not gripping or haunting More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Chrissie rated it:

I am not a good person to jusdge this book. I do not like short stories or books composed of vignettes. That is exactly what this book is. You do end up learning about Ondaatje' family, beginning with his grandparent s and ending with his parents. You do not learn much about Michael. The depiction of lush, verdant Ceylon, the changing landscapes, the valleys and mountains is captivating. But I was clearly having a hard time with the form of the chapters. There are chapters of poetry; they do not More...

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Aug 15, 2008

Nathaniel rated it:

Running in the Family – Ondaatje

This is a collection of short stories, a small offering of poems, a few remembrances, some vignettes, a spattering of well juxtaposed historical facts and some black and white photographs. It is the memoir as scrap book, half evolving into a filial overture to a flawed but forgiven father. “Running in the Family” is more atmospheric than linear, more concerned with the rakish and entertaining essence of wealthy Ceylon in the first part of the 20th cent More...

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