Ondaatje's Works Series: from Generation to Generation
About This Novel
"Generations" is Ondaatje's biographical novel with a very special style. Using the journey back home in the late 1970s as a clue, the writer attempts to reach a childhood he does not understand and restore the trajectory of his parents' marriage failure and family decline. Mervyn Ondaatje, a rich man who was dissolute and contemptuous of the world, and a father who was good at self-destruction, ended up living a miserable life guarding a chicken farm on the mountain and died of cerebral hemorrhage caused by alcoholism. Wild and beautiful Doris, the dazzling champion at the masquerade ball, loved Tennyson and Yeats, and eventually fled to England alone, struggling to raise her children. The parents described by Ondaatje once had equally matched passion and sense of drama, but as Mervyn gradually destroyed his authority as a husband and father, the once noisy and legendary family also disintegrated in chaos. "Generations" is both a wishful search for a long-absent father and an affectionate gaze at a colonial era that has ended.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
