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Title: Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, Alan Cumming ISBN: 0-375-41566-1 Publisher: Bantam Books-Audio Pub. Date: 09 May, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 6 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.52 (156 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Beautiful Writing, Stark Subject Matter
Comment: I didn't like the English Patient, I thought it was tiresome. In fact, I almost didn't read this book because of that.
Anil's Ghost on the other hand, has some of the most beautifully written prose I've ever read. Part One drew me in and made me ache that anyone could have such talent with the written word.
The book isn't told in a traditional way. It takes energy to follow it, there are a lot of leaps the reader must make, especially toward the end, to keep track of the characters and storyline, but it wasn't impossible and given the subject matter, it wasn't a surprise either.
In my opinion, the non linear way the story was told made it more like storytelling than a book and as such, I thought it a very clever way to approach the subject matter. Death squads are never easy to deal with, government sponsored murders, rebels kidnapping doctors, criminal shortages of medical supplies - these things are horrifying, so horrifying the first impulse is to look away. Instead Ondaatje tells us the story of loss and hopelessness through the lives of the characters, which enables us to hear it.
Humans are fallable, that people stand by and say nothing while great atrocities take place is not only cowardly, it's human nature. I think that to make the characters in this book three dimensional and real, Ondaatje crafted them with flaws. Anil's inability to connect, Sarath's government connections, Gamini's distaste for people in general - these are all ways of drawing the reader in. The goal isn't to make us like Anil or Sarath, it's to tell the story through them, through different perspectives.
Rating: 4
Summary: Suspense and Tragedy Written with Elegance
Comment: The story of forensic anthropologist Anil Tissera is one that Ondaatje drapes in mystery. As can be expected from any who have read his previous works, the description and flashbacks are both vivid and prolificly written. This novel was more accessable than its famous predecessor, The English Patient: there are fewer secret lives and betrayals, but more importantly, nearly all the characters are on the same linear path.
Anil Tissera (Sri Lankan born) is a woman who has been educated in England and the United States in the field of forensic anthropology. She has become immersed in the application of her schooling to the arena of Civil Rights violations. So when a position is needed in the country of Sri Lanka, she enters a world recovering from and on the brink of insurrection, guerrilla warfare and government sponsored killings. This is where the majority of the novel takes place. The focus of her investigation is on a skeleton nicknamed 'Sailor'. Sailor has been hidden among other more ancient remains in a restricted park area that government officials would have access to. Anil is treading on thin ice once she begins to discover the dark secrets surrounding Sailor. However, some of this compelling story is weighed down by lengthy character exploration and remembrances of the past. Suspicion about Sarath, her gov't appointed partner, and his brother Gamini kept my interest well occupied.
Ondaatje succeeds in keeping even the slowest part of the novel well written (and hence acceptable). His technique is an approach that seems to emphasize giving all of his character's a past complete with secrets, pain and pleasure. This is good in the long run, but at times one wants a return to the main story. Ondaatje's humor is first-rate and most will catch themselves laughing more than once. The atmosphere he creates is very enthralling. Anyone interested in drama, mystery, civil rights or international affairs will enjoy this book, making its base very wide in my opinion. I could not help but compare Anil to Dana Scully from the X-Files, which seemed silly at first glance until I realized (and truly appreciated) that what Ondaatje has written about in Sri Lanka, though fiction, is based on truth. This realization made the novel more frightening much better.
Rating: 4
Summary: The author goes missing
Comment: Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost is a sensitive, lyrical,
and ultimately disturbing work. It is disturbing
since the reader is fooled into believing that the usual contract between
the author and reader will be the met: closure at the end.
The novel starts out with the vitality and dramatic promise of good
political murder mystery. The plot begins much like Cruz-Smith's Gorky Park,
where recent human remains are found that may be linked to a
state-sponsored murder. In fact, the plot parallels between Anil's Ghost and
Gorky Park are striking (although the writing styles are as different as
hot and cold). These parallels, while coincidental, are ultimately helpful in
understanding Ondaatje's work.
In each novel, a talented, withdrawn, totally uncorruptable forensic
investigator operates within a totalitarian state, trying to solve, at some
personal peril, a possible state-sponsored murder. Learning who the victim
was, his occupation, habits, locale, becomes the early focus. In each case the
investigator is assisted by a colleague who may or may not be in collusion with
the state. The investigator seeks out advise from an historian who
knows the country's past. The investigator takes the skull of the victim
and, in secret, has the face reconstructed. At every turn, the state machinery
works against the effort.
This is where the parallels end. While the Gorky Park detective, Arkady,
is working against specific evils, greed and megalomania, and where
confrontations are possible, Anil is swimming through an endless sea of evil.
The fact that the Sri Lankan landscape is infused with a gentle beauty and
a quiet ancient eastern spiritualism makes the creeping evil of the death
squads in the night, torture, and killings, even more stark. There are three
secret terror armies afoot: those of the illegal government,
the anti-government forces, and the separatists, who are all murdering
people with casual callousness.
In Gorky Park, when the truth is learned
- when the body is identified, the evidence amassed and the story known,
Arkady stuffs it all into an envelope and mails it to the
Chief Police Authority and then all he has to do is stay alive and
wait. But there is no such social moral authority
present in all of Sri Lanka for Anil. Anil surfaces,
is publicly humiliated, slapped-down, and ejected from the country, and this
was the good option; had she stayed, she would be killed.
She tried to surface, but the sea of evil is much too strong.
It is around this time that the author Ondaatje also begins to depart,
- leaving us remaining with only traces of the story. It has become
something now more like a Samuel Beckett play, where all the
characters are either vanished, dead, or left twisting in the wind,
and the very plot itself goes missing. I don't think this is
accidental. When it is explained how the person who as helped Anil escape
death is rewarded for his trouble, we cannot even tell if it is because he has
done too much, too little, or for some other reason altogether. Nor does it
seem to matter much, except, as the author explains,
that it helps to connect two estranged brothers.
Some closure comes when we learn that some of these characters do survive
(ironically, those most unbalanced). At the close, the character who we've
seen suffer some of the worst, experiences a moment of grace. Ondaatje
seems to be telling us that in times of such evil, this is maybe the very best
we should expect.
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