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Running in the Family
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
8 posts | 22 read | 9 to read
In Michael Ondaatjes beloved family memoir, fact and fiction blur to create a dazzlingly original portrait of a lost time and place. Ondaatje left Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) at the age of eleven. Almost twenty-five years later, he returned to sort out the recollected fragments of experience, legend, and family scandal, and to reconstruct the carefree, doomed life his parents and grandparents had led in a place where couples danced the tango in the moonlight, where drink, gambling, and romance were the main occupations of the upper class. Rich with eccentric characters and captivating stories, and set against the exotic landscape of a colonial empire in decline, Running in the Family is Ondaatjes unforgettable journey through memory and imagination to reclaim his past. From the Hardcover edition.
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ChaoticMissAdventures
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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Pickpick

I really loved this! I picked it up on a whim in a used bookstore in Canada because Ondaatje is Canadian, it turns out he is also half Sri Lankan - most of his family is from and still lives there. Focused on the history of his family & it is everything you could ask for about a 1920-40s eccentric family the stories are amazingly outlandish and pure fun. You can tell there is a cover of nostalgia but the writing is delicious enough to forgive it.

marleed Can I just sit a spell in your gorgeous little corner and work down my TBR!? 5mo
ChaoticMissAdventures @marleed thank you! I love this corner, but the chair is super uncomfortable. Which means I get to sit across the room from it and look at it while I read 😂 5mo
marleed Oh that‘s funny and I understand. I own a gorgeous teakwood barrel chair that my late-husband and I ordered from the Sundance catalog years ago for our anniversary. The whole purchase and delivery is such a fun story (and way over our budget) that I can‘t part with this uncomfortable wood chair. But I absolutely love looking at it - and it serves as a great spot for tossing my ever growing pile of throw blankets 5mo
ChaoticMissAdventures @marleed aesthetics and memories that sounds like a lovely chair you should always keep! 5mo
30 likes4 comments
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ChaoticMissAdventures
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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"Both my grandmothers lived cautiously, at least until their husbands died. Then they blossomed, especially Lalla who managed to persuade all those she met into chaos. It was Lalla who told us that the twenties were 'so whimsical, so busy - that we were always tired.'"

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ChaoticMissAdventures
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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This book I bought on a whim at a used bookstore in Edmonton, Alberta and only 35 pages in I am delighted. Michael Ondaatje (known for his novel The English Patient) talks about his family and particularly his father who seemed to be a terrible 1920s rich troublemaker. Engaged multiple times - a few overlapping- he finally married Michael's mother.
The wedding almost doesn't happen because the bishop is a terrible driver.
#NFNR

Suet624 sounds fascinating! 5mo
21 likes1 comment
blurb
ChaoticMissAdventures
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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#Weeklyforecast

NFNR books tagged and The Three Mothers (about MLK, Malcolm and Baldwin 's mother's) I also have on audio Viola Davis' autobiography Finding Me.

Fiction needing to read and get back to the library - Emma Cline's The Guest and The French Goncourt Prize winner - The Most Secret Memory of Men which I am incredibly excited for and have high hopes. It seems to be a Senegalese -French Shadow of the Wind 😍

review
ReadingEnvy
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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Pickpick

Memoir 3 of my #nonfictionnovember reading frenzy. Can you believe I put off reading this one because I thought it was about running? Instead Ondaatje uses a few visits to Sri Lanka in the 1970s to take a trip down memory lane, with stories from his family told interlaced with poetry. ⤵️

ReadingEnvy In some ways it's a strange privileged point of view since he only mentions the violence that would have already started in one passing comment, but he moved away from the island as a child so the majority of memory to recall comes more through the stories of the older generation of his family. 4y
batsy I read it on one of my trips to Sri Lanka and it was the best companion. It's a pretty nostalgic and privileged POV for a place that has known so much trouble, but his writing is so gorgeous. 4y
ReadingEnvy @batsy yes I really felt that privilege or maybe denial, but he really did capture that feeling of being rich in a beautiful place 4y
47 likes3 comments
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ReadingEnvy
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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It's baaaaaaack

Billypar It's been awhile! If it comes up in a tbr explode session, I think that means it belongs in the 'keep' pile 😁 4y
Zelma 😳😂😂😂😂😂 4y
ReadingEnvy @Billypar ha! A sign! 4y
36 likes3 comments
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Centique
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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#maymoviemagic #dontstopmenow #howfarillgo
#twopromptsatonce 😂
“Don‘t stop me now I don‘t know how far I‘ll go” is the kind of thing Michael Ondaatje‘s father might have said when a croquet game went wrong and he started brandishing a gun. This memoir of Michael‘s childhood is full of anecdotes and tall tales - which he admits might have grown taller with telling over the years.

Centique @Cinfhen btw it‘s not my good memory with these backlisters- it‘s cos I went through my old shelves and library records a while ago and made a list 😋 5y
Cinfhen Hahaha!!! Thanks for setting the record straight 😘😘😘 5y
batsy Oh, good pick! I enjoyed this one a lot ❤️ 5y
RohitSawant Awesome multitasking! 🙌🏼 💜 This one sounds interesting. 5y
80 likes4 comments
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TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Running in the Family | Michael Ondaatje
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"And so its name changed, as well as its shape ... the wife of many marriages, courted by invaders who stepped ashore and claimed everything with the power of their sword or bible or language."

LeahBergen I love Ondaatje! 8y
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