AccueilGroupesDiscussionsPlusTendances
Site de recherche
Ce site utilise des cookies pour fournir nos services, optimiser les performances, pour les analyses, et (si vous n'êtes pas connecté) pour les publicités. En utilisant Librarything, vous reconnaissez avoir lu et compris nos conditions générales d'utilisation et de services. Votre utilisation du site et de ses services vaut acceptation de ces conditions et termes.

Résultats trouvés sur Google Books

Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.

Chargement...

Running in the Family (1982)

par Michael Ondaatje

Autres auteurs: Voir la section autres auteur(e)s.

MembresCritiquesPopularitéÉvaluation moyenneMentions
1,6993010,162 (3.89)105
In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.… (plus d'informations)
  1. 10
    Le Patient Anglais - L'Homme Flambe - The English Patient par Michael Ondaatje (stevereads)
  2. 00
    Bone China par Roma Tearne (Nickelini)
    Nickelini: Both books tell stories of upper class Sri Lankan families, and both are lovely.
  3. 00
    Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir par Frances Mayes (emydid)
  4. 01
    Adieu Alexandrie par André Aciman (wandering_star)
    wandering_star: Both these are family memoirs with a light-hearted tone, although Out Of Egypt has a rather more sombre background setting.
Chargement...

Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre

Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.

» Voir aussi les 105 mentions

Anglais (28)  Italien (1)  Allemand (1)  Toutes les langues (30)
Affichage de 1-5 de 30 (suivant | tout afficher)
This book is a strange addition to the genre “memoir.” The author returns from Canada to the island of his birth, then known as Ceylon, to recapture as many fragments as he can of his parents from the memories of those who knew them. The harvest quickly turns phantasmagoric. I began to wonder if this was a novel but soon became convinced if Ondaatje were making this up, he would have been more restrained. I found myself believing these tales of the antics of his father, his mother, and especially his maternal grandmother Lalle, as well as the circle in which they moved, well-situated and star-crossed, suspended somewhere between European and native.
Then, when the book was nearly finished, Ondaatje lifts the veil. He writes something about his mother that seems the key to the entire book:
“She belonged to a type of Ceylonese family whose women would take the minutest reaction from another and blow it up into a tremendously exciting tale, then later use it as an example of someone’s strain of character. . . . An individual would be eternally remembered for one small act that in five years had become so magnified he was just a footnote below it” (p. 169).
As if a kaleidoscope had been turned, everything I had read in the book so far reconfigured itself. No, it was not fiction, nor was it fact, strictly speaking. It was history in the way that myth is history.
And what compelled Ondaatje to make two emotionally wrenching trips back to Sri Lanka to excavate the past? As he writes: “During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed. So our job becomes to keep peace with enemy camps, eliminate the chaos at the end of Jacobean tragedies, and with ‘the mercy of distance’ write the histories” (p. 179).
This book then fulfills a dual aim. We seek to understand ourselves in the process of dredging up the memory of those who sired, who bore us. At the same time, we fulfill the ancient duty to them that the Romans called pietas, which was not only reverence toward the gods but toward one’s family, one’s ancestors. The result, in this case, is a strangely affecting book. It took me by the hand to visit a distant island I’ve never been to. I was deep in it when I heard the news of the Easter bombs in Colombo, the craziness of the incidence in the book helping illuminate the madness of the act and vice versa, except that neither really explained the other. Instead, both took on the air of strands in the complex tapestry of life. Beautiful and sad.
Ondaatje crafts his prose with the care of language of an accomplished poet. Also, like the poet that he is, he doesn’t construct his account in a straight-forward way. Instead, he records a series of episodes whose effect builds in an evocative way. In that way, it is a prose evocation of memory, as once both insightful and untrustworthy. ( )
  HenrySt123 | Jul 19, 2021 |
This was an easy, mostly pleasant look into Ondaatje's past and his family's past. It's a nice lyrical book, and I enjoyed it, though it's not something I'll remember much of beyond the fact of having read it. ( )
  dllh | Jan 6, 2021 |
Well, I like reading Michael Ondaatje, I like his style and his flow. I found this quite mesmerising.

In some ways it reminded me of Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard in that it speaks of a world that is not only long gone but also about as far removed from most peoples' experience as you can get. It's a window into another person's life which is where it is different from his novels, this is about his childhood and how that world was in that unquestioning way that children have when they have nothin to compare it to.

Brilliant ( )
  Ken-Me-Old-Mate | Sep 24, 2020 |
beautifully written ( )
  piquareste | Jun 3, 2020 |
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was hooked from the start - Just could not put it down and cursed when I had to .... I loved the writing and the descriptions of the period and places, a time that no longer exists but full of fascinating detail that made you feel as though you were sitting there watching it all happen in front of you. The author is quite a story-teller. There were crazy, colourful and interesting characters in his family. I was in stitches at some of the antics that his father got up to and at the same time could not believe how he could have done some of the things he did!!! I also loved the photos that were included in the book. Looking forward to reading more from this author. ( )
  Carole888 | Mar 1, 2020 |
Affichage de 1-5 de 30 (suivant | tout afficher)
Mittels der Sprache führt Ondaatje den Leser an die Plätze seiner Eltern und seiner Kindheit, so dass man sich das Leben zwischen Teeplantagen und Pferderennen, Regenzeit und Regenwald inmitten von unzähligen Gewürzen und Gerüchen bildlich vorstellen kann. Ondaatje vergisst weder auf die Diskrepanz zwischen den verschiedenen ansässigen Nationen, noch auf die oft ignorante Ächtung anderer Gesellschaftsschichten oder Kasten hinzuweisen. Nicht immer kann er die Aktionen seiner Familie gutheißen, doch selbst die kritischste Bemerkung hat noch eine liebevolle Färbung. Wahrscheinlich hat Michael Ondaatje als Kind von der Zunge des Thalagoya gekostet, denn "[v]iele Jahre später wird dies eine verbale Brillanz zeitigen, auch wenn diese manchmal mit schlechtem Benehmen einhergeht."
 

» Ajouter d'autres auteur(e)s (2 possibles)

Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
Ondaatje, Michaelauteur principaltoutes les éditionsconfirmé
Brossard, NicolePostfaceauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Bruin, Paul deTraducteurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Vous devez vous identifier pour modifier le Partage des connaissances.
Pour plus d'aide, voir la page Aide sur le Partage des connaissances [en anglais].
Titre canonique
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances italien. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Titre original
Titres alternatifs
Date de première publication
Personnes ou personnages
Lieux importants
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Évènements importants
Films connexes
Épigraphe
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
"I saw in this island fowls as big as our country geese having two heads...and other miraculous things which I will not here write of."
Oderic, (Franciscan Friar, 14th century)

"The Americans were able to put a man on the moon because they knew English. The Sinhalese and Tamils whose knowledge of English was poor, thought that the earth was flat."
Douglas Amarsekera, Ceylon Sunday Times 29.1.78
Dédicace
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
For Griffin and Quintin.
For Gillian, Janet, and Christopher.
Premiers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Drought since December.

All across the city men roll carts with ice clothed in sawdust.
Citations
Derniers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
(Cliquez pour voir. Attention : peut vendre la mèche.)
Notice de désambigüisation
Directeur de publication
Courtes éloges de critiques
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Langue d'origine
DDC/MDS canonique
LCC canonique

Références à cette œuvre sur des ressources externes.

Wikipédia en anglais (1)

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque

Description du livre
Résumé sous forme de haïku

Discussion en cours

Aucun

Couvertures populaires

Vos raccourcis

Évaluation

Moyenne: (3.89)
0.5 1
1 3
1.5 1
2 21
2.5 5
3 57
3.5 18
4 104
4.5 8
5 91

Est-ce vous ?

Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing.

 

À propos | Contact | LibraryThing.com | Respect de la vie privée et règles d'utilisation | Aide/FAQ | Blog | Boutique | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliothèques historiques | Critiques en avant-première | Partage des connaissances | 203,222,866 livres! | Barre supérieure: Toujours visible