Running in the Family

Upon reading Running in the Family, I have discovered that the author, Michael Ondaatje enjoys opening his story up by not narrating or summarizing the text, but using vivid descriptions to put the reader in the setting. Take for instance the opening sentences of the memoir " What began it all was the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold onto. I was sleeping at a friend's house. I saw my father, chaotic, surrounded by dogs and all of them were screaming and barking into the tropical landscape." (21) I didn't know what was going on with the story, but the description captured my attention making me want to read on to figure out why he started his story this way.

After getting fairly far into the text, I would probably have to say that this book is going to be my least favorite. I feel that Ondaatje has interesting stories, but he doesn't present them in an amusing way and there for I found myself dozing and not too interested in reading at all. As the book goes on he changes his way of using a lot of description, to instead summarize events that took place, thus making the action seem boring. On page 50, he goes into describing how his grandmother was fortunate to own a horse, but doesn't use any action when telling the story. I felt that this could have been an interesting story about gambling, but his lack of action makes it seem bland.