Running in the Family is a memoir written by Michael Ondaatje and published first in 1982. Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan writer who has published many highly coveted works of poetry, fiction, essays, and even films. Ondaatje lives in Canada and has brought newfound recognition to Canada’s literature and authors. Through his unique writing style and persistent work in Canadian literature projects, Though he started out by writing poetry, his novels, such as The English Patient, brought greater, international recognition to his writing.
Ondaatje's narrative is a recounting the lives of mostly Ondaatje’s father and grandmother, and the work is actually fictionalized, with some elements of magic and realism embedded within the plot. With his unique post modern style, Ondaatje focuses mainly on his growth outside of Sri Lanka and his experiences when he returns to Ceylon, another name for his native island of Sri Lanka, in the 1970s.
However, Ondaatje doesn’t only talk about himself in Running in the Family. He also discusses his father, Mervyn, who enjoyed drinking but would accidentally get into sometimes scandalous problems. Interestingly, Ondaatje barely knew his father Mervyn, yet Running in the Family goes into such detail into the latter’s life that the reader knows that the stories are partly fabricated based on his own knowledge and knowledge procured from other family members.
Regardless, Ondaatje explores many themes throughout the course of Running in the Family, as he mixes family history with his fictional creations of himself and his family to better understand who he is, rooted in his history. In Running in the Family, Ondaatje deeply explores the themes of identity and emptiness, of memory, its importance, its value, and of the importance of family, both for the benefit of himself and of the readers alike.
