The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 25 Sep 2011 12:19 AM PDT A boy's thirst for adventure is only limited by his imagination. The Cat's Table Author: Michael Ondaatje Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 287 pages ISBN: 978-0-224-093620 THERE is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find this way in the path of your life." Michael Ondaatje is most universally known for writing The English Patient. The novel won the Booker Prize and the film based on it glided up the red carpet to received multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Film. Ondaatje is only known in smaller circles for his poetry. He used to be far more prolific as a poet than as a novelist, and although he has concentrated more on novels during the past decade, his prose hums and breathes like poetry, often tempting the reader to stop and read a line again, out loud, committing it to memory. As the narrator of such language, Ondaatje could have hardly picked a better conduit than 11-year-old Michael. Michael describes himself as a feral child. Neither poor, nor homeless, nor an orphan, adults take little interest in his comings and goings. His true life and his true joy are in the perfect freedom of unsupervised hours, free imagination and a kid's untethered lust for adventure. When we first meet Michael, he is alone and in a daze, boarding an ocean liner to leave his native Sri Lanka and head for England. He is to reunite with a mother he barely knows, and continue his studies. However, he adapts quickly, as feral children do, and immediately finds and makes friends with two other boys. On the Oronsay, this sea-crossing "castle", they pledge that each day they will do "at least one thing that was forbidden". Michael meets these two friends at his assigned dining table for meals, the so-called "Cat's Table". It is populated by the ship's leftover passengers, the ones that could not be fitted in elsewhere, even if there had been interest or effort involved. To the boys, they are invaluable resources of the true stories behind ship gossip, dirty jokes, and knowledge of the ship's nooks and crannies. Between their companions at the cat's table, Michael also has occasional access to first class gossip provided by a bored "aunty" who knows his family, and sometimes, grudgingly, has him over for tea; his favourite cousin Emily (departing from Colombo, Michael inevitably runs into a few people he knows); a roommate who is in charge of the dog kennels and holds card games in their cabin at night; and his own tireless explorations with his friends. It is tough to believe anyone on the ship is wiser to its workings and population than this little boy. Although everyone on board knows of a prisoner – a murderer – is being transported, only the boys see him regularly. Early on, they take possession of lifeboats as a sort of clubhouse for their meals and as observation points. Every night they sit and wait for the prisoner to be brought onto deck, hands manacled and chained to a metal collar, to walk and take a few short breaths of fresh air. They never show themselves, of course, but get a thrill from the mere proximity to someone so obviously dangerous. Michael's ample supply of ingenuousness and curiosity makes him a direct participant of the ship's greatest scandals and events. When precious objects go missing from locked cabins, he knows where they have gone. When the most important passenger dies during the journey, Michael knows how it happened. When a terrible storm makes things dangerous even for those huddled inside the ship, only Michael and one of his friends remain outside, drenched, close to drowned, and only by a miracle they survive. Ondaatje arranges the boy's experiences in bite-sized chapters. The reader experiences them the way active children do, one intense flash after another. The previous moment is not so much forgotten as set aside, stored to be digested at a much later date. Perhaps only in adulthood. Children do not see people as a compilation of physical features or even as complex beings – they see them for who they are at the time their paths cross. They see life in the same way. There is no "big picture", only countless vivid snapshots. Children do not waste their time pondering the possibility of "never again", but at times Ondaatje tosses us decades into the future. To an adult Michael (to all adults), the past is precious and memories of free and happy times are weighed down by the ache of nostalgia. The Cat's Table is a deeply pleasurable read. Despite the ship being larger and more populated than any place Michael ever experienced in Sri Lanka, three weeks on board shrink it. Connections slowly appear between passenger and events, including a surprising one that links Michael to someone who knows someone who knows the prisoner. |
| Posted: 25 Sep 2011 12:16 AM PDT FOR the month of September, 2011: Non-fiction 1. A Doctor In The House: The Memoirs Of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad 2. The Power Of X: Enter The 10 Gods by Joey Yap 3. Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story Of His Trip To Heaven And Back by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent 4. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking 5. A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard 6. No Excuses! The Power Of Self-Discipline: 21 Ways To Achieve Lasting Happiness And Success by Brian Tracy 7. Quantum Leaps: 100 Scientists Who Changed The World by Jon Balchin 8. Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going by Han Fook Kwang, et al 9. Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother by Amy Chua 10. Unsinkable: How To Bounce Back Quickly When Life Knocks You Down by Sonia Ricotti Fiction 1. A Game Of Thrones (A Song Of Ice And Fire) by George R.R. Martin 2. The Confession by John Grisham 3. Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn 4. Room by Emma Donoghue 5. Fall Of Giants by Ken Follett 6. I Don't Know How She Does It (Movie Tie-In) by Allison Pearson 7. A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 8. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht 9. A Dance With Dragons (A Song Of Ice And Fire #5) by George R.R. Martin 10. Family Ties by Danielle Steel > Monthly list compiled by MPH Bookstores, Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur. |
| Posted: 25 Sep 2011 12:16 AM PDT More than 100 authors from various parts of the world will be gracing this year's Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Indonesia. WHAT started as an economic development project after the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia has become an annual event that is one of the largest literary gatherings in the region. Held each October to commemorate the first bombing in 2002, the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival is now in its eighth year. Bringing together writers, publishers, academics and readers from all over the world, the event this Oct 5-9 will be filled with readings, workshops, panel discussions, literary lunches, debates, book launches and performances. More than a hundred authors from various parts of the world – Australia, Colombia, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, as well as the United States and Europe – have confirmed their participation. Among them are Alexander McCall Smith (the 44 Scotland Street series), Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little), Dipika Rai (Someone Else's Garden), Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao) and musician Paul Kelly (How To Make Gravy). Malaysia's Sharon Bakar and Uthaya Sankar will be there as well. This year's theme, Nandurin Karang Awak – Cultivate The Land Within, is inspired by a line from Gaguritan Salampah Laku, a long poem in traditional metre composed by one of Bali's most respected poets, high priest Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen, who lived to the ripe old age of 126: "My intention now – pursuing this life of simplicity, since I possess no rice fields – is to cultivate the land within myself ..." The festival, with first-time sponsor ANZ Bank, will commence with a tribute to the poet. On its website (ubudwritersfestival.com), festival founder and director Janet De Neefe says: "Developing the self in ways similar to cultivating rice fields, by sowing the seeds of truths, cutting down the stalks of desires, and carefully reaping a bountiful harvest for the finest grain, is an important philosophical concept in the spiritual landscape of Bali. "At a time in history when disputes over borders, sovereignty, resources, culture and economics are more acute than ever, we must remember that the greatest shared space in the world is in the mind and the heart. The 2011 Festival theme is devoted to redefining the boundaries of consciousness and connection with the vast, rich and mysterious territory within." Most sessions will be held in English. Translators will be present for those conducted in Bahasa Indonesia. – Rouwen Lin |
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