karenika - books - running in the family

Running in the Family

When my father finished school, his parents decided to send him to university in England. So leaving Ceylon by ship Mervyn Ondaatje arrived at Southampton. He took his entrance exams for Cambridge and, writing home a month later, told his parents the good news that he'd been accepted at Queen's college. They sent him the funds for three years of university education. Finally he had made good. He had been causing much trouble at home and now seemed to have pulled himself out of that streak of bed behaviour in the tropics.

It was two and a half years later, after several modest letters about his successful academic career, that his parents discovered he had not even passed the entrance exam and was living off their money in England. He had rented extravagant rooms in Cambridge and simply eliminated the academic element of university, making close friends among the students, reading contemporary novels, boating, and making a name for himself as someone who knew exactly what was valuable and interesting in the Cambridge circles of the 1920s. he had a good time, becoming briefly engaged to a Russian countess, even taking a short trip to Ireland supposedly to fight against the Rebels when the university closed down for its vacation. No one knew about this Irish adventure except an aunt who was sent a photograph of him posing shyly in uniform.

On hearing the distressing news, his parents decided to confront him personally, and so his mother and father and sister Stephy packed their trunks and left for England by ship. In any case my father has just twenty-four more days of high living at Cambridge before his furious family arrived unannounced at his doors. Sheepishly he invited them in, being able to offer them only champagne at eleven in the morning. This did not impress them as he had hoped, while the great row which my grandfather had looked forward to for weeks and weeks was deflected by my father's useful habit of retreating into almost total silence, of never trying to justify any of his crimes, so that it was difficult to argue with him. instead he went out at dinner time for a few hours and came back to announce that he had become engaged to Kaye Roselap - his sister Stephy's closest English friend. This news stilled most of the fury against him. shephy moved onto his side and his parents were impressed by the fact that Kaye leapt from the notable Roselaps of Dorset. On the whole everybody was pleased and the following day they all caught the train to the country to stay with the Roselaps, taking along my father's cousin Phyllis.

During the week in Dorset my father behaved impeccably. The in-laws planned the wedding, Phyllis was invited to spend the summer with the Roselaps, and the Ondaatjes (including my father) went back to Ceylon to wait out the four months before the marriage.

I never read or watched the English Patient but the girlfriend of one of Jake's friends recommended Running in the Family so I decided to check it out. Michael really does have the oddest family ever and his stories on their life in Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka, are wonderfully entertaining.