One of The New York Times Book Reviews 10 Best Books of the Year
On the morning of December 26 2004 on the southern coast of Sri Lanka Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents her husband and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing unsentimental beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then over the ensuing years as she emerges reluctantly slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning from her family’s home in London to the birth of her children to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family somehow still alive within her.
One of The New York Times Book Reviews 10 Best Books of the Year
On the morning of December 26 2004 on the southern coast of Sri Lanka Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents her husband and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing unsentimental beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then over the ensuing years as she emerges reluctantly slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning from her family’s home in London to the birth of her children to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family somehow still alive within her.