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Guest Reviewer: Abraham Verghese on The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
One means by which I have kept track of the passage of time is by the appearance of a new Michael Ondaatje book. I’ve loved his poetry (and I still know long passages from Secular Love by heart). I love the way his books of poetry or prose, fiction or nonfiction (and some of his books are hybrids that seem to be all those genres in one book) are so carefully crafted. I must have read In the Skin of a Lion 10 times, disassembling it to see how this magic alchemy came about.
You can imagine my excitement when The Cat’s Table, Ondaatje’s latest, arrived on my desk. I found myself reading aloud with a loved one, savoring, just a few pages a day that were carefully rationed. Reading aloud was a way to make every morsel last longer, have it linger on tongue and ear. I can’t think of a book I’ve read where the sense of a journey—in this case, a ship going from Ceylon to England via the Suez Canal—is so carefully mirrored in the reader’s experience. I had the sense of movement, of a big ship inching away from the shore, and of seeing one’s former life recede. At the assigned dinner table (from which the title derives), one meets fellow travelers and the brief bios they present to the world. With each passing day, the narrator finds that these constructed selves give way to something deeper, something overstated, or something dark and ominous, or at other times they modestly conceal a being that is incredibly beautiful and heroic. As the journey progresses, the many characters and the flavors each adds begin to meld together, and I had a sense of the narrative soup thickening, the pace increasing. Indeed, by the last few pages it was as though we had arrived all too soon at the bottom of a most delicious cioppino or bouillabaisse. The fleshy items were dispensed with, the shells all removed, leaving only those last few spoonfuls, and in them a wise world, a complete world, a world distilled. When it was over, I had that sense one lives for as a reader: the feeling of having discovered a truth not just about the imagined world of the novelist, but also about oneself, a truth one can now carry forth into the world, into the rest of one’s life....
Make haste to get this book, then do what I did: Fill up the tub, ration yourself to a few pages a day, read aloud, preferably to someone as crazy about Ondaatje as you are. Be disciplined. Don’t exceed your ration. It is a long voyage but it will go by too soon. So relish. Enjoy!
Abraham Verghese is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Cutting for Stone, which has been translated into 23 languages and spent over a year on the New York Times best-seller list. He is also the author of My Own Country, a 1994 NBCC Finalist and a Time Best Book of the Year, and The Tennis Partner, a New York Times Notable Book. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has published essays and short stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is currently Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University and lives in Palo Alto, California.
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion- a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.What had there been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never imagine the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea.In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner in Colombo bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table' , as far from the Captain's table as can be, with a ragtag group of adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean the boys tumble from one adventure to another, and at night they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a mystery that will haunt them forever. From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.What had there been before such a ship in my life? Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099554424
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780099554424
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 240. Seller Inventory # 38587183
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780099554424-GDR
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table' - as far from the Captain's table as can be - with a ragtag group of adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. Seller Inventory # B9780099554424
Book Description Condition: New. In. Seller Inventory # ria9780099554424_new
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 384 pages. 7.80x5.08x0.94 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0099554429
Book Description Condition: New. 2012. Paperback. In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and to another. Num Pages: 384 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 129 x 24. Weight in Grams: 274. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780099554424
Book Description Condition: New. 2012. Paperback. In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and to another. Num Pages: 384 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 129 x 24. Weight in Grams: 274. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780099554424