The Cat's Table [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

In his new novel, The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje imagines a young boy's three-week sea voyage across the oceans, from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to England. Surprisingly, the eleven-year-old travels alone and is, not surprisingly, allocated to the "lowly" Cat's Table, where he joins an odd assortment of adults and two other boys of similar age. In the voice of young "Michael", Ondaatje shares the boys' adventures on the ship with charming immediacy, while an older, adult "Michael" looks over his shoulder, first hardly noticeable, and later, more and more directly reflecting on his own recollections and more. Are we reading a childhood memoir of sorts, a coming-of-age story, a personal journey into the past? Are we reading fact or fiction? May be, all of it. The parallels to the author's life are easily spotted: a childhood in Ceylon, a nineteen fifties journey by ship from there to England... Other parallels to the author's life come into view in the course of the book. Also, Ondaatje suggests in the first pages: "I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was..." In the Author's Note (at the end of the book) Ondaatje is as clear and opaque as can be. If you don't want to know, don't look at the end and discover the journey as it unfolds.

Young Michael and his two new friends, Cassius and Ramadhin, become soon inseparable. They freely roam the huge ship, exploring any nook and cranny they can get into, especially during nights. Cassius is the rambunctious, Ramadhin, the cautious, more reasonable one, conscious of his "weak heart". Michael describes himself as a "follower". The men at the Cat's Table, astutely observed by young Michael, while distinct in personality and behaviour, share, nonetheless, their curiosity for the happenings on the ship - one could call theirs "the gossip table" - and, more importantly, they each provide some kind of "life lesson" for the boys, be it in history, music, literature or biology. The most intriguing passenger at the table, however, is Miss Lasqueti, who appears to have insider knowledge of a very different kind. From time to time, they are joined by seventeen-year-old, beautiful and "mysterious" Emily, a distant cousin of Michael's. Given her "higher social standing" and her placement in the dining room, she can contribute intriguing news for any evolving "story". She knows, for example, much about the dangerous, heavily guarded, prisoner, who the boys have noticed during their nighttime adventures. Of course, Emily also has her secret encounters at night, overheard by Michael hiding in a lifeboat...

For the first half or so of the novel, I am simply charmed by the descriptions of the boys' hilarious or risky escapades on the ship as it moves across the Indian Ocean towards the Suez Canal. We explore the ship's "world" through a child's eyes. The episodes, told more like independent vignettes than in a contiguous narrative, succeed, nonetheless, in carrying our curiosity forward: they captures the atmosphere on ship, provide personality capsules of passengers or crew, and details of their various activities. Once closer to land, we are offered glimpses into the varying landscapes and port cities. While Michael's journey is depicted with gentleness and often lyrical descriptions, something seems to be missing in terms of the story's overall meaning and depth - at least for me. But soon enough, like entering a new section in the book, the voice of the adult Michael takes on a more prominent role. He drops hints how different episodes or people might be connected; he starts asking questions about the veracity of what we have been told, pondering the reliability of his long-term memory...

And, most engagingly, Ondaatje, while continuing to remain within the overall three-week time span of the journey, now leaves it with ease to reveal aspects of past and future of several of the central characters. These mental excursions - relating to Emily, Miss Lasqueti, Ramadhin, etc. and, last but not least, the prisoner - help us fill in gaps within earlier descriptions of episodes during the voyage. They also add an integrating layer to the narrative that I had been hoping for. Finally, they bring us also closer to the adult Michael. It is only later in life that he realizes the journey's importance as "a rite of passage"; a journey that formed him in more ways than he has acknowledged for a long time. In hindsight he can give voice to an emotion that he experienced then and many times since as he grew into an adult as "a desire that is a mixture of thrill and vertigo." Emily, when he meets her again, much later, has the better phrase for what affected them: "We all became adults before we were adults."

In the end, it does not matter anymore - at least to me - whether this book is a novel or a memoir/autobiography. It is a beautifully rendered story of growing up and living with the memories of youth. The novel's language, the tone, the images and the tender approach to his subject suggest that this is probably Ondaatje's most personal and intimate novel in many years. [Friederike Knabe]

I willingly admit that Michael Ondaatje's novels do not rank among my favourites; I found "The English Patient" melodramatic, "Anil's Ghost" tedious and "In The Skin of a Lion" only barely engaging. However, when a Canadian literary icon releases a new and critically acclaimed novel, I have to jump on the bandwagon so as not to miss out.

During a recent interview, Ondaatje quipped that the story line of "The Cat's Table" consists of, "A boy [Michael] getting on a boat...and getting off a boat." Fortunately, the plot develops beyond such a reduction. On a 1950s voyage from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to England, the reader meets three young boys who, free from adult guardians, find opportunities to spy, assist in burglary, smoke unknown substances, and speculate on human behavior. A slew of eccentrics join these boys at their dining table, sharing world knowledge and personal stories: a tailor, a botanist, a burned-out pianist, a retired ship junker and a mysterious spinster. A chained murderer, a deaf girl, an upper-class woman who largely neglects her role as Michael's caretaker and Michael's comely cousin complete the novel's cast of skillfully manipulated and mysterious characters. Each personality harbours secrets, which emerge both on board the Oronsay and during the flash-forwards that dominate the book's latter half.

I have always revered Ondaatje as a poet for he has an incredible ability to manipulate the intricacies of space and time. This skill shines in "The Cat's Table," producing a spare yet lucid story that engages the reader's intellect. The storyline moves fluidly while the author leaves enough unsaid for his audience to play an active role in piecing together his puzzle.

Michael Ondaatje's admirers await his books with patient anticipation. In return, Ondaatje crafts works such as The Cat's Table, one of those rare literary achievements that combines page-turning storytelling with perfectly shaped prose. Each word and each scene has been chosen with care, and the book comes together in a harmony of ideas, memories, and narratives.

I say narratives because The Cat's Table encompasses many stories: in its seemingly straightforward telling of a boy's 21 days on a ship bound from Sri Lanka to England, its deeply complex characters offer glimpses of chance encounters and intermingled lives. The book is a palimpsest, the story of an 11-year-old boy named Michael, told by his older self who happens to be a well-known writer, written by Michael Ondaatje, who includes a disclaimer that while he took a similar trip as a boy, this work is purely fictional. These three Michaels intersect with one another in a memory play seen through the lens of the ship. The language and reflections are mature: this is the understanding only an adult can bring when he looks back at himself years later, trying to come to grips with how the smallest of actions can ripple through many lives over many years.

The titular Cat's Table is the opposite of the Captain's Table, the least prestigious spot in the dining room. The characters who gather around it pass through young Michael's shipbound existence, from his two contemporaries who raise hell with him all over the ship to the adults at the table. You get the sense that an entire novel could be devoted to any one of these subsidiary characters, even though they figure in only small ways in Michael's story.

Without ever belabouring a description, Ondaatje fills the reader's world with the sights, sounds, and smells of the ship and the ports it slips through. He also inverts the idea of the ship as a closed-off setting, creating a wonderland with myriad decks and enough forbidden places to keep a gang of three boys busy for weeks. It is peopled by ailing millionaires, live pigeons, unseen violinists, and the prisoner, a mysterious figure whose close-guarded nightly walks become a focal point for the boys, giving their days structure and their imaginations fodder. And there is always the sense that there is more to see, more to hear and overhear, than anything Michael and his friends can comprehend.

Memory and time are as fluid as the ocean the ship traverses, a moment in childhood with momentum but no fixed address. The narrative is overall a linear one, starting at the beginning of the journey, ending when the Oronsay arrives in England, but this is also a collection of stories. As the older Michael reflects on a particular character, events jump forward in time, following that character's interaction with Michael throughout the years before looping back to pick up where we left off on the ship. We arrive at the end of the book a little wiser, a little changed, just as the characters at the Cat's Table are.

Without falling into the triteness of a typical coming-of-age story, The Cat's Table offers a refined, note-perfect journey of how three weeks can alter the course of lives. I genuinely cared for these people and their misadventures, and when it was time to depart for other shores, I was left hoping that I would run into them again.

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