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    Audiobook5 hours

    Wave

    Written by Sonali Deraniyagala

    Narrated by Hannah Curtis

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    One of The New York Times Book Review's 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.




    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 5, 2013
    ISBN9780385366625
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Wave

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      An incredibly powerful book! Sonali Deraniyagala weaves us through sorrow, grief, and lifts us with heartwarming memories, in that order. This book gave me a very gritty and realistic portrayal of mental health, the fragility of the human mind, and the grief process. The beginning of the book is very hard to get through. I almost wanted to stop listening to it. But later in the book, her recollections were uplifiting and even brought a smile to my face repeatedly. Thank you for writing this book, and letting us follow your mind through this incredible journey you have been through.
    • 4/5
      This was a beautifully written memoir of a woman who lost her children, husband and parents during the 2004 Tsunami. The mother describes in such an honest way her grief and guilt. It is gut wrenching to think about enduring such a tragedy and I feel this author was so real in her writing. You can tell that the book was an exercise in healing as she worked through the devastating loss. Makes you think about how very precious life really is and how you should be truly grateful for what you have as things can change in a moment.
    • 4/5
      ”I wasn’t stuck under anything. I was moving. I could tell now. My body was curled up, I was spinning fast. Am I underwater? It didn’t feel like water, but it has to be, I thought. I was being dragged along, and my body was whipping backwards and forwards. I couldn’t stop myself. When at times my eyes opened, I couldn’t see water. Smoky and gray. That was all I could make out. And my chest hurt. It hurt like it was being pummeled by a great stone…The water was pulling me along with a speed I did not recognize, propelling me forward with a power I could not resist. I was shoved through branches of trees and bushes, and here and there my elbows and knees smashed into something hard.”(Page 10-11)On December 26, 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala was vacationing at a hotel on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, with her family---her husband, two sons and her parents---when a tsunami hit. By the end of the day she knew that the rest of her family had been swept away leaving her as the only survivor. In haunting prose, her memoir explains how she managed to get through those first few days after the tragedy, vaulting between disbelief and acceptance, until final acknowledgment and preservation of the memories of the wonderful years she shared with her family.It’s always interesting when reading about people who overcome great obstacles and prevail in a way that we cannot even begin to understand, to wonder how we would respond to similar circumstances. I think when we do this we often can’t give ourselves much credit for exhibiting similar characteristics and so it was with this story which left me wondering how I would respond to a tragedy of this magnitude. But the author understands this, I think, and explains very courageously, how difficult it was to go on living with the immense guilt that this tragedy foisted on her. She certainly thought she would kill herself, and prepared for it. She also tried drowning her sorrows in alcohol and drugs. But at some point in time she realized that rather than stifle the memories she had she would gradually allow them to be a part of her and planned accordingly. I’m sure writing this memoir helped in preserving as well as sharing the memories of her two boys, her husband Steve and her parents. She came to realize she needed these memories and so they changed from a catalyst for sorrow to a vehicle for healing. I think that was what made her writing so powerful without being sentimental. And as times passes, she found her grief turning into something quite different:”Seven years on, and their absence has expanded. Just as our life would have in this time, it has swelled. So this is a new sadness, I think. For I want them as they would be now. I want to be in our life. Seven years on, it is distilled, my loss. For I am not whirling anymore, I am no longer cradled by shock….But I have learned that I can only recover myself when I keep them near. If I distance myself from them, and their absence, I am fractured. I am left feeling I’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.”I finished this memoir feeling very grateful for all I’ve been given. Very highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A powerful, haunting memoir of loss and grief.
    • 3/5
      I recently saw the movie Impossible, which was about this same tsunami. A mother, her husband and three sons are staying at a resort when thew tsunami hits. I really liked the mom in the movie, which was also based on a true story, so the mom in this one was not one in which I could easily relate. It is the most horrible thing in the world to lose your whole family, but at the beginning of the book she did not know that yet, so her attitude just turned me off. I know people react different ways when faced with a tragedy so maybe she was in shock. I am sure this will be very unpopular with many readers but this whole pity genre is one I don't quite understand. If one feels the need to write about something in their lives that was horrible or that one needed to write as a catharsis, I understand. But why publish and try to make money from it? Anyway this is what it is, the tsunami as terrible without doubt, many families would never be the same and I feel horrible for this woman and all the families.