Anil's Ghost

Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje's stories have the feeling of a sepia photograph; they're rich, real, and yet hallowed by lack of color. His prose lives in sparse details. A water drop falls from a leaf, a woman sighs, a headlight blinks a man into consciousness for a second. The world turns. Evil in chaos, scientists and artists struggling to create. Risking their next moment in a sepia photograph to show up in truth.

He haunts me, flashes of a ghost barely not seen. And yet the story is very solid, gritty, terrible and beautiful and full of soil as well as soul. Anil's Ghost is a mystery, a mystery about government killings in Sri Lanka, a mystery about an unsual skeleton, a mystery of choices, conscience, and survival. It's about Anil, who left. Sarath, who retreated into cynicism and the archeology of ancient temple ruins. Gamini, who hides in drugs and twenty-hour shifts in the ER. And whether it is possible to do anything but survive in the face of constant murder and betrayal.