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The Cat`s Table (Hardcover)

Today $14.25
1% off - Amazon $14.39
Item #: 13393189
    From Michael Ondaatje: a stunning new novel, by turns poignant and electrifying—one of his most vividly rendered works of fiction.

    In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a ship bound for England, and at mealtimes is seated at th......more

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From Michael Ondaatje: a stunning new novel, by turns poignant and electrifying—one of his most vividly rendered works of fiction.

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a ship bound for England, and at mealtimes is seated at the “cat’s table” with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, “bursting all over the place like freed mercury.” But there are other diversions: one man talks to them about jazz and women, another about literature. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner—his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the differences between the tender innocence of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding, and about a lifelong journey that began unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.

Author:
Ondaatje, Michael
ISBN:
9780307700117
Format:
Hardcover
Pages:
265
Publish Date:
10/04/2011
Publisher:
Alfred a Knopf Inc

Portions copyright 2005 Muze Inc. All rights reserved.

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  • In Ondaatje's best novel since his Booker Prize-winning The English Patient, an 11-year-old boy sets off on a voyage from Ceylon to London, where his mother awaits. Though Ondaatje tells us firmly in the "Author's Note" that the story is "pure invention," the young boy is also called Michael, was also born in Ceylon, and also grows up to become a writer. This air of the meta adds a gorgeous, modern twist to the timeless story of boys having an awfully big adventure: young Michael meets two children of a similar age on the Oronsay, Cassius and Ramadhin, and together the threesome gets up to all kinds of mischief on the ship, with, and at the expense of, an eccentric set of passengers. But it is Michael's older, beguiling cousin, Emily, also onboard, who allows him glimpses of the man he is to become. As always, Ondaatje's prose is lyrical, but here it is tempered; the result is clean and full of grace, such as in this description of the children having lashed themselves to the deck to experience a particularly violent storm: "our heads were stretched back to try to see how deep the bow would go on its next descent. Our screams unheard, even to each other, even to ourselves, even if the next day our throats were raw from yelling into that hallway of the sea." (Oct. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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