Name: Ana Hein's review of Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
Item: Wave
Rating: 3
Author: Ana Hein

Sonali Deraniyagala

A memoir of the author's experiences as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that killed her parents, husband, and two young sons recounts her struggles with profound grief and survivor's guilt and her gradual steps toward healing.

Wave

The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high, moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland. And from there into the depths of the author's despair: how to live now that her life has been undone? Sonali Deraniyagala tells her story - the loss of her two boys, her husband, and her parents - without artifice or sentimentality. In the stark language of unfathomable sorrow, anger, and guilt: she struggles through the first months following the tragedy -- someone always at her side to prevent her from harming herself, her whole being furiously clenched against the reality she can't face; and then reluctantly emerging and, over the ensuing years, slowly allowing her memory to function again. Then she goes 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 while learning the balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and her fundamental need to keep her family, somehow, still with her.

A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami

Withers

Here is our debris, but it is all intact. All of it. I am bewildered. I can't join the pieces together. The are dead, my life ruptured, but in here it feels as it always did.

Ana Hein

It's a good read, and I'm certainly not in a position to speak on someone else's grief, but the way she describes hers in this book is just… too much. Too much to hold. It devastates at times, but more often, it simply overwhelms.

Jeannette Ordas

Heart breaking and well written story of the author’s grief and memories.

Kaitee Tredway

I picked up this book for the Bookriot Read Harder 2020 challenge, and was mistakenly under the impression that it was a work of fiction. About a quarter in, I learned it is a memoir and honestly, it is one of the more riveting books I’ve read in a while. Well written and straight-forward, the author unselfishly takes us through her grief over an unimaginable tragedy. She doesn’t put a veneer on it. Sometimes, the light she shines on herself is harsh and unflattering. It is not an necessarily an easy book to read, but I highly recommend it.

Luca Conti

It's a very good book but after a while it gets annoying. The sadness she describes doesn't incorauge You to read on

Alex Stelzhammer

Fatima Janneh 

Cici Harrison

Mahasin S Ameen

Emily Burns

Louisa

Hyshe Thaufeeg

Ash(ley) Michelle C.

Jerilynn Hallett 

Beth Seaton

Lisa

Tiffany

Manoj Nayak

Michelle Li

Kate Gravelle

Holly

A poignant memoir of the author's experiences as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that killed her parents, husband and two young sons recounts her struggles with profound grief and survivor's guilt and her gradual steps toward remembering the joyful times she shared with lost loved ones. 50,000 first printing.

Ana Hein &
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

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Ana Hein &Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

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Highlights

Join the club

Ana Hein &
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala