Book Review: At The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

January 03, 2017
This is one of the first, if not the first, Book Reviews I attempted, posted in November 2012. As I read it, it is not particularly 'reviewish' if that's a word. Discussion by the very mature women in my book group, in my memory, proved to be a good time.

The Cat’s Table on a ship is

reserved for ‘lower class’ folk and was

not so welcoming and pleasant as this table....

.....unless you are three small boys

on a three week adventure 

in a ship bound for family in England

across the Indian Ocean

through the Suez Canal

and into the Mediterranean

~ with a chaperone who is maybe just not that attentive.

Michael Ondaatje’s flight of fancy took us through the holds of a passenger ship with kennels and a garden

a dangerous prank in a storm at sea

sly slipping of a dog on board at the first port of call at Aden

mystery

romance

intrigue

Once all of those twists and turns were exhausted,

this group of eight very mature women

segued into.......lunch ~

banana bread and oranges

coffee and cheese 

laughter and chatter about

everything from nanotechnology

to the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse

and everything in between.

“What is interesting and important happens mostly 

in secret, in places where there is no power.”

~ Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table