A tsunami of pain

Sonali Deraniyagala's memoir, Wave, has received rave reviews as one of the most touching and artistically meritorious rendering of personal loss, pain and recovery.

Deraniyagala lost her entire family of a husband, two boys, mother and father, in the 2004 tsunami, that was spawned by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, and hit the Southern coast of Sri Lanka (and other places). 

Ms Deraniyagala, who is an economist at London University and Columbia University, was at that time, vacationing with her family at a hotel overlooking the beach.

In one sweep Deraniyagala lost just about everything that constituted life for her. She survived miraculously by clinging to a tree limb.

Wave, true to the image of a dark wave on the book cover, is a "granular" and "tactile" account of grief, regret and survivor's guilt. 

The memoir has found place in several "top ten books of 2013" book lists. 

The book has moments of familial conviviality as in the following passage:

Squid marinated in lemongrass and lime and chili flakes. Slices of salty haloumi cheese and lamb chops and sausages from Nicos, our local Greek Cypriot butcher…. We’d marinate a leg of lamb for two days in a mix of yogurt, almonds, pistachios, lots of spices, mint, and green chilies…. We’d buy greengages in August. Often they were perfect, not too yielding, but not unripe.

But the conviviality makes for extremely painful read, because they are snapshots of the writers' past, compared to which the present becomes all the more unbearable. 

It seems like Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir in which Didion tries to come to grips with the sudden death of her husband, would fade into a fun and frolic read once one delves into the world of Wave.

Teju Cole has a review of the book here.