The cat's table

Resource Information

The work The cat's table represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Ipswich Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The cat's table

Statement of responsibility

Michael Ondaatje

Creator

• Ondaatje, Michael, 1943-

Subject

• Bildungsromans
• Ocean travel -- Fiction
• Sea stories
• Action and adventure fiction

Genre

• Bildungsromans
• Fiction
• Sea stories
• Action and adventure fiction

Language

eng

Summary

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table"--as far from the Captain's Table as can be--with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story--by turns poignant and electrifying--about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

813/.54

Index

no index present

LC call number

PR9199.3.O5

LC item number

C38 2011

Literary form

fiction