Right after his 11th birthday in 1954, Michael is left alone
to board the Oronsay, a ship that will take him on a three
week journey to a school in England, where a mother he can
barely recall is supposed to meet him at Tilbury. Assigned
to Table 76, the furthest from the Captain's Table and known
as "The Cat's Table", Michael is wary of the others,
especially of the two other boys also on their way to
schools in England.
While it might be the least of all the tables on the ship,
Michael starts to enjoy the companionship of his many
unusual tablemates. Within a very short time, the tough
looking Cassius, Michael (aka Myrah), and a more
philosophical Ramadhin with his frail heart quickly become
fast friends and they all spend their days from early
morning to late at night in mischievous, dangerous fun
creating havoc on board. Slipping in and around almost
invisibly to the staff and customers on the ship, they snoop
and steal, catching random adult conversations around them
while making up their own minds over what is happening as
they dine on pilfered food from the first class area in
their lifeboat hideaway.
Like most children, the boys accept the people they meet on
the ship at face value and readily accept those as friends
whose activities or conversations are of interest to them,
such as a special trip to the engine room or intrigued by
why Miss Lasqueti, a lady with a special jacket with holders
for the pigeons she was taking back to England, has a pistol
in her purse. After years of boarding schools, the boys are
been adept at lying to interfering
adults and have been primed to withhold small, yet
pertinent, truths from those in authority. How are they to
know the ever rippling damage that can happen from their
misplaced devotion and loyalty?
Well known Booker prize winning author, Michael Ondaatje,
has created an extraordinary, yet highly realistic cast of
characters in THE CAT'S TABLE and presents their stories in
a loosely woven, almost vignette fashion, that interweaves
their relationships from the past into the
future, from eastern to western influences, from the
perspective of the young to adult knowing in a highly
readable and totally engaging novel.
Narrated primarily from the perspective of 11 year Michael,
the story of his journey by ship from Colombo to Tilbury,
England via the Suez Canal begins benignly, then subtly
shifts into more shocking and alarming events that "can take
a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence".
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.
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