A fan of select Indian authors, I picked up Anil’s Ghost because it said an Indian name. After reading the jacket cover, the discovery that Ondaatje wrote The English Patient simply sealed the deal.
Anil, who actually is a woman, leads a complicated life. Her love life is up in the air, she’s returned to war torn Sri Lanka after many years, and to add to everything else, she’s a forensic anthropologist. Dealing with bodies and the technicalities of death is a cinch for Anil, but remembering she’s only a character in a book wasn’t so easy for this reader.
Ondaatje uses a style familiar to Arundhati Roy’s in The God of Small Things, in that he entices you with a flashback (or is it a foreshadowing, he doesn’t reveal anything too quickly) before certain chapters and gives you whiplash as he takes you back to Anil and the bodies.Just when you think you won’t fall for it again, you do... hook, line, and sinker... you’re looking around for an explanation and can’t find one.
Like practically every other South Asian writer, Ondaajte injects parts about the history of the sub continent and politics that seemed at times extraneous. Thankfully, he didn’t overdue it and describe The Partition, which appears to be the only historically relevant event in quite a number of NRI fiction recently.
Ondaatje is an intelligent writer that did his forensic anthropology homework and this book is for those who love details and minute technicalities.