“The Cat's Table”
By Michael Ondaatje
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, $14.30
When Michael Ondaatje was 11 in 1954, he left his home in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on a ship called the Oronsay and traveled alone for three weeks before settling in England. In his moving new book, “The Cat’s Table,” Ondaatje’s narrator, Michael, is a writer who tells a tale of leaving his home in Ceylon at age 11 in 1954 aboard a ship called the Oronsay and traveling for three weeks alone before settling in England.
Ondaatje, the author of five previous novels including “The English Patient” and more than a dozen poetry collections, insists that “The Cat’s Table” is not autobiographical — only that its premise is based on the facts of his life. But the lines between truth and fiction blur considerably.
“Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place,” Ondaatje writes. Is this the narrator Michael dispensing some hard-earned insight? Or is this Ondaatje explaining the novel’s structure? In this case, it’s probably both.
Built around Michael’s reminiscences of his adventures on the journey, interspersed with brief snapshots from his later life, the book seems almost plotless for nearly 200 pages. It’s a great credit to Ondaatje’s skills as a writer that he can keep readers happily engaged throughout without the familiar hum of a narrative pulling things along. Instead, the reader experiences the story much the way the 11-year-old Michael would have experienced it — as a series of “confusing fragments” and “lost corners.”
It’s unconventional storytelling, but with it, Ondaatje pulls off a neat trick, capturing both the wide-eyed wonder of his narrator’s younger self and the world-weary wisdom he brings to it. It gradually becomes clear that the plot, once oblique, has been subtly building throughout the book. In this way, “The Cat’s Table” plays out almost like a classic mystery novel.
The novel is also a coming-of-age story and an immigrant’s tale. There is a Huck Finn-ish quality to young Michael’s adventures aboard the Oronsay. He meets two boys his age, Cassius and Ramadhin, and the three of them, free of parental guidance, explore the adult world as wildly curious observers and mischievous scamps.
The book’s title is a reference to the table where Michael is assigned to eat his meals on the ship. It is the “least privileged place” (as opposed to the captain’s table) but, as he discovers, that comes with its perks.Ondaatje is an elegant, spellbinding writer. “She had a laugh that hinted that it had rolled around once or twice in mud,” he writes of one character, bringing vivid poetry to what is essentially dime-store crime novel prose. He leaves lots of space in the narrative, feeling no compunction to explain every twist or detail every motivation. In this way, he invites readers to breathe their own meanings into these spaces.
There is also plenty of wry humor. Describing one evening’s entertainment options on the ship, Ondaatje writes, “a chaplain had given a talk titled, ‘The Crusades, Pro and Con: Did England Go Too Far?’ Ramadhin and Mr. Fonseka went to that lecture and returned to tell us that apparently the speaker felt the English did not go far enough.”
The pacing of “The Cat’s Table” takes some getting used to, and the flurry of action in the closing pages feels a little at odds with the story’s leisurely flow. One long section that answers many of the minor mysteries from the narrator’s trip on the Oronsay feels like a slightly unnecessary concession to the gods of traditional narrative.
Ultimately, these are minor quibbles. Ondaatje is in full command of his talents here, and the result is a novel that grapples gracefully with deep, complex truths in the guise of a simple childhood story.
