Superb literature courtesy of the great white North
Anil’s Ghost
The Blind Assassin
Anil’s Ghost ****
by Michael Ondaatje
Bloomsbury (May 2000)
Michael Ondaatje’s last novel, The English Patient, brought him world recognition. His latest, Anil’s Ghost, will have his fans spellbound. The novel was recently awarded the Booker Prize and the Giller Prize of Literature in Canada. Ondaatje’s vivid prose brings to life Sri Lanka, the island on which the story is set — the humid heat, the aromas of exotic food and the chilling fear of its inhabitants during a time of civil war.
Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka, but living in England and the United States for the past 15 years, is a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights organization to work with local officials to discover who is responsible for a rash of killings. Soon after her arrival, she discovers a skeleton, just five years old, at a high-security archaeological dig site of ancient burial grounds. Evidence she gathers leads her to conclude that the body is a murder victim and, since the site is accessible only to government officials, it becomes clear to her who is responsible. But if the very people she is working for are guilty, whom can she trust and to whom can she turn for help in bringing justice? With a local archaeologist, Sarath Diyasena, as her collaborator, she begins to piece together the mystery of the skeleton’s identity, which she nicknames “Sailor.”
Throughout Anil’s journey, a number of captivating characters are introduced and the novel begins to take on the quality of an epic poem. From a blind monk living in seclusion in the forest, to an overworked doctor dealing with the horrific injuries of torture and war, to the artist with a talent for putting a face to human skulls through reconstruction, Ondaatje tells their stories with an absorbing narrative. Ondaatje’s method of storytelling has us spending as much time in the past as in the present. The events are not always told in chronological order: accounts of the murders come at unexpected moments, making their shock value even more effective — “She is about ten yards from the bridge when she sees the heads of the two students on stakes, on either side of the bridge, facing each other. She would shrink down into herself, go back, but she cannot. She feels something is behind her, whatever is the cause of this. She desires to become nothing at all. Mind capable of nothing. She does not even think of releasing them from this public gesture. Cannot touch anything because everything feels alive, wounded and raw but alive.” At the same time, constantly changing narrative voices give the book a haunting quality — as if the story is being told by an entire nation. The mystery of this novel is not the identity of “Sailor” the skeleton, but that of a country in a time of civil war.
The Blind Assassin****
by Margaret Atwood
Bloomsbury (September 2000)
The tenth novel of acclaimed poet and author Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, is yet another testimony to the Canadian writer’s skill in creating complicated plots dripping with poetic prose. The novel is actually two books and three stories in one. Sound complicated? Well, it is. In the first tale, Iris Chase, now an elderly woman, tells the story of her life growing up with her younger sister, Laura, in Port Ticonderoga, Canada. After the girls’ mother dies, when they are very young, they are raised by a housekeeper as their shell-shocked father is incapable of caring for them. Much of these childhood chapters focus on the girls’ relationship and their differences in personality. Laura is flighty, dreamy, what one would call “insensible,” while Iris is the responsible, obedient older sister, destined to care for Laura.
Their childhood as daughters of a respected manufacturing tycoon is relatively uneventful, aside from torturing their private tutors and harboring a suspected criminal in the attic for several months. At the age of 17, Iris is married off to a business associate of her father’s in order to save the family business suffering in the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is then that the real sadness and profound emotion of this novel reveals itself as Iris is engulfed by her controlling husband and sister-in-law — so much so that she cannot protect her younger sister from the horrible family she has married into.
The second story within the book is supposed to be a novel written by Laura Chase. Chapters of this novel are interspersed with chapters of Iris’ memoirs. This seemingly outrageous fictional tale slowly starts to make sense as parallels between the two stories begin to emerge. It isn’t until about halfway through the book that the entwinement of the two becomes obvious, resulting in a third story. Iris’ narration contains a strong clue about the direction in which Atwood is leading the reader — “I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light. You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.”
It is in the end that all the book’s secrets are revealed. Atwood, whose writing provides readers with a dreamlike experience, is inarguably one of the shining literary stars of our time.
