The Cat's Table

The Cat's Table

by Michael Ondaatje (Author)

Synopsis

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly 'Cat's Table' with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, 'bursting all over the place like freed mercury'. 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 from the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the difference between the magical openness of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding - about a life-long journey that began unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage, when all on board were 'free of the realities of the earth'. With the ocean liner a brilliant microcosm for the floating dream of childhood, "The Cat's Table" is a vivid, poignant and thrilling book, full of Ondaatje's trademark set-pieces and breathtaking images: a story told with a child's sense of wonder by a novelist at the very height of his powers.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 25 Aug 2011

ISBN 10: 0224093614
ISBN 13: 9780224093613
Book Overview: From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion: a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.

Media Reviews
#1 - Maclean's Bestseller
#1 - Globe & Mail Bestseller
A Globe and Mail Best Book
A New York Times Notable Book
A tour de force....startling, enchanting.
-- Maclean's
Ondaatje slowly unravels a tapestry of images and dramatic (and exotic) tableaux.... [He] creates fascinating visual and sensual effects.
-- Toronto Star
Ondaatje's most intimate yet.... Wonderful, offering all the best pleasures of Ondaatje's writing.
-- Globe and Mail
Ondaatje's most accessible, compelling novel to date. It may also be his finest...A breathtaking account not only of boyhood, but of its loss....Universal in its themes, heartbreakingly so, and a journey the reader will never forget.
-- Vancouver Sun, (Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald)
Ondaatje here fashions an entire world.... Is there a novelist who writes more compellingly about tenderness than Ondaatje?... Breathtaking.
-- Montreal Gazette
A convincing and genuinely moving narrative.
-- National Post
Michael Ondaatje wows with his tale of three boys who find friendship and intrigue on a sea voyage carrying them to the brink of adulthood.
-- Chatelaine
The mystery and magic of The Cat's Table - and this can be said of all of Ondaatje's writing, including his best-known novel, The English Patient (1992) - lies in its sinuous narrative weave between present, past and a future sometimes contemplated, sometimes fated, and then always inhabited.... As the latest of Ondaatje's artful and glowing geographies and histories of the human heart, this vessel makes another, differently disposed, but related voyage across several strangely familiar seas.
-- Winnipeg Free Press
A story so enveloping and beautifully rendered, one is reluctant to disembark at the end of the journey.... Though the ocean journey in The Cat's Table lasts a mere 21 days, it encapsulates the fullness of a lifetime.
-- Quill
A completely original orchestration of a coming-of-age story, memoir, maritime adventure as powerful as Conrad or Stevenson.... Astonishing.
--Howard Norman, The Globe and Mail

Ondaatje's most accessible, most compelling novel to date.
--Robert J Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun

Michael Ondaatje is the greatest living writer in the English language.... All that is great in his other books is fully present in The Cat's Table .
--Aleksander Hemon, The Wall Street Journal (Favourite Book of 2011)

The most beautiful, haunting and ageless book I've read this year.
--Pico Iyer, The Hindu
Author Bio
Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943. In the 1950s he moved to England, and went to school in south London. In 1962 he emigrated to Canada, where he has lived ever since. His books include his memoir, Running in the Family, numerous collections of poetry, and five novels - including The English Patient which won the 1992 Booker Prize.