This memoir will give you a deatiled
verbalization of each city and place in Ceylon, so that the reader has a clear picture of what it
was like to actually be there. His simple structure of setting things up, will make you feel the
temperature and jungle like atmosphere by his entailed descriptions.

Ondaatje reminds me of Stein
in certain passages because of how he holds nothing back from the reader. It's as though he's
sitting down and talking to you while showing photographs and stories of his exuberant and loud
family.

The book begins with a series of disjointed stories about
Ondaatje's parents and grandparents. I found this part somewhat hard to get through as Ondaatje
drops into the stories without providing the reader with the necessary information to understand
who the players are and why they are important. However, since the book is highly impressionistic
in style, perhaps this approach works. After all, most of us learn about our family history in
bits and pieces; we don't pick up yarns and memory bites in chronological order.

The third
section, "Don't Talk to Me about Matisse" is a literary treasure! Ondaatje weaves a travel journal
with childhood memories. Ondaatje's journey through Sri Lanka and memory land is depicted with
great passion and reflection: "I witnessed everything. One morning I would wake and just smell
things for the whole day, it was so rich I had to select senses. And still everything moved slowly
with the assured fateful speed of a coconut falling on someone's head, like the Jaffna train, like
the fan at low speed, like the necessary sleep in the afternoon with dreams blinded by toddy."

Ondaatje generously included several of his poems in the middle of the book. "The Cinnamon
Peeler", with its strong sensuality, serves as a fitting metaphor for the stories about romantic
interludes in the author's family. "The Cinnamon Peeler" is so beautiful, I plan to commit it to
memory.

Ondaatje dwells on the salient qualities of his relatives and homeland. If this book were
a painting, it would be a mostly green wash of color with bright, blood red splashes. The red
splashes could represent the tragedy so inherent in Ondaatje's family history. Alcoholism and
mental illness rule the house in this family. There are many humorous moments, however, and
Ondaatje delivers them with great bravado: "Lalla's great claim to fame was that she was the first
woman in Ceylon to have a mastectomy. ... She kept losing the contraption to servants who were
mystified by it as well as to the dog, Chindit, who would be found gnawing at the foam as if it
were tender chicken." These hilarious memories give the reader a reprieve from the underlying
tragedy like a much-needed downpour during a drought.

In the final sections, Ondaatje slowly
reveals the many layers of his father's sad, but remarkable life. One chapter, called "Dialogues"
merely consists of bits and pieces of conversations about his father. Whether Ondaatje imagined
these conversations or actually heard them retold is not important. They give homage to his father
in a unique and poignant way.

If you're looking for a travel journal on Sri Lanka, don't look
here. But, if you want unforgettable impressions of an exotic land and a remarkable family, if you
yearn for a memoir rendered with the finest of literary care, "Running in the Family" will surely
please.