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.
Recommend this book
Add your recommendation
Only registered users can recommend books. Please use the buttons below to either create a new account, or sign-in to an existing account.
The Cat's Table is surely a success... because every page exhibits traces of Ondaatje's poetical cast of mind - his feeling for beauty, his sense of strangeness, and his ability to create a distinctive and pervasive emotional atmosphere - New Statesman
One of the most admirable and enthralling literary novels of the year - Daily Mail
An interesting variation on the rite-of-passage genre - Metro
Superbly poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience - Economist
Woven through all of this are the memories of a vanished past; a mental and physical innocence in a once carefree place that no longer exists in Sri Lanka's complicated and brutal metamorphosis. The Ondaatjes themselves come from an old Burgher family and have always been outsiders to the main struggle between Singhalese and Tamils. As a result, in The Cat's Table, we are shown a place of luminous magic and make-believe... beautifully crafted - Independent
The final chapter, Arrival, is a compact piece of emotional truthfulness, grave and playful at the same time, beautifully written and moving - Times
Ondaatje's great achievement is demonstrating that fiction can be stranger than truth - Spectator
This novel is written with Ondaatje's usual poeticism' - Scotland on Sunday
Grace, humanity and despairing romance are central to the art of Michael Ondaatje. Although the narrative flutters and sighs and even drifts, this is such an attractive, melancholic and engaging work of connections and disconnections that it does not matter - Irish Times
An eloquent, elegiac tribute to the game of youth and how it shapes what follows... Ultimately, Ondaatje has created a beautiful and poetic study here of what it means to have your very existence metaphorically, as well as literally, all at sea - Independent on Sunday
No one who has read a novel or poem by Ondaatje can easily forget its powerful imagery. In this, too, the new novel is characteristic... Ondaatje admits in an author's note that, although The Cat's Table is a work of fiction, it has 'the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography'. This may explain why his wondrous prose feels more alive to the world than ever before - Financial Times
Ondaatje has hit the nail on the head with this book, a beautiful analysis of transient subjects of gazes, dreams and memory - Time Out
The author of The English Patient conjures up a cast of eccentric and fascinating characters - Psychologies Magazine
Michael Ondaatje's impressive new novel, containing dreams and fantasy between a ship's flanks...is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel: one full of wonders - Daily Telegraph
The novel tells of a journey from childhood to the adult world, as well as a passage from the homeland to another country, something of a Dantean experience. The constriction of space intensifies a sense of allegory as a frame surrounding a painting - Saturday Guardian
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.
