Anil's Ghost is a dispiriting book. Despite being well researched and topical, the characters are barely sketched out and hard to identify with.

Set in modern day Sri Lanka, the story is an anthropological "who dunnit". The primary character is Anil Tissera - a young Sri Lankan forensic specialist sent to her homeland by an international human rights group to investigate unearthed skeletal remains. Anil, to me at least, thinks more like a man than a woman. Her masculine name is explained as being purchased from her brother thus, "She gave her brother one hundred saved rupees, a pen set he had been eyeing for some time, a tin of fifty Gold Leaf cigarettes she had found, and a sexual favour he had demanded in the last hours of the impasse". All this at the age of twelve, frankly it would have been easier to just give herself a new name!

However the book is littered with characters with funny names: Leaf Niedecker, Cullis Wright, both empty and shallow characters. At least the Sri Lankan names are a delight.

The remainder of the book describes Anil's meanderings up and down Sri Lanka with her local "guide" and adversary Sarath Diyasena. Their quest is to discover the identity of one particular skeleton, nicknamed "sailor", in order to tie this murder to politically organised genocide. Depressingly, the importance of the skeleton's identity dissipates towards the end of the book. It falls away like so many of the characters. Even Anil is dispatched off, powerless and unsuccessful, about 15 pages before the end of the book!

The relationship between the Sarath and his brother Gamini, a doctor in the Kynsey Road Hospital is also touched on from time to time. The sleeve describes the book as a "story about love, about family and about identity". None of this is evident or even believable.

The stark images and unfairness of civil war are well described and fill almost every page of this book. That at least is believable. Ondaatje describes Sri Lanka beautifully, although at times it reads more like a travel log rather than a book of fiction. In the acknowledgments Ondaatje lists the following works as invaluable in helping him: The National Atlas of Sri Lanka and the Mediaeval Sinhalese Art by Ananda K Coomaraswamy, especially his writing on 'eye ceremonies'. That much is apparent with a great number of words devoted to the country's topography and cultural rituals.

Michael Ondaatje is best known for his work 'The English Patient' for which he won the Booker Prize in 1992. This was adapted into an Oscar winning film and many claimed that by skilfully combining poetry and prose Ondaatje had created a new form of writing. Dismally, Anil's Ghost is neither a new form nor a compelling read. Hardly a "page turner" in my estimation.

Click here to buy 'Anil's Ghost' TODAY!

Top