Wave Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B4EK68C | Format: PDF
Wave Description
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.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 5 hours and 24 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: March 5, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00B4EK68C
I have to say, this book shows the absolute darkness of humans when they face the unthinkable natural disasters. This book is brutully honest, with such vivid discription about almost every single detail of the Tsunami that the author was encountering: the deadly smell of it, the weight, the color...
After reading many memoirs writing about similar survial stories, I honestly think this is one of the shortest and the best ones. I simply could not put it down.when I just finished the first chapter, I could feel the desperation,hopelessness, and numbness from the author, like a mental picture was made in my mind about everything that she has to learn to understand, and eventually, surrenders to.
In my view, POWERFUL is the best word to describe about this book.
By jayjay
Confusion was the only thing to cling to in the hours after the tsunami in Sri Lanka. Somali had seen the ocean coming for land and had fled with her children, Vik and Mal, and her husband Steve. She didn't pause to alert her parents. She didn't pause for those left behind. Having been picked up by a Jeep, the waters caught them nonetheless. Bin the dark swirling of mud and water, she grabs a limb and survives. For months afterwards, it is her survival that is the tragedy. Family gone, she longs to join them.
We have become inured by the overwhelming number of stories of horror and tragedy. Perhaps we have thought to ourselves what we might do. Surely, we would sweep our parents up. Nor seeing the ocean in so strange a fashion, would be one of those who fled early. We might have had a better plan to survive. But in the end this is not the case. This book impels us to face the fact that given the overwhelming, we are helpless.
The author talks intimately of her days, months, years following the loss of her family. The prose is revelatory but not melodramatic. Sonali's story is told honestly with her attempts of suicide, her drinking, and her despair. She doesn't hide her frank anger with those who did survive. She doesn't rationalize the depths of despair and the inward turning of grief. It has been said that humans cannot grasp the horror of thousands of deaths, but can come to understand it by learning a story in depth. This book puts truth to this perception.
By Amelia Gremelspacher
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