Monica Casper's Reviews > Wave

I study and teach trauma, and so I'm naturally drawn to trauma memoirs--a genre I know well. I'm also a mom and daughter, and this story of grief and colossal loss drew me in from the first page. Unimaginable to lose one's children, husband, and parents in one massive event. Deraniyagala does an amazing job of capturing the confusion she felt post-catastrophe, the sense of not being in her life without her loved ones there to anchor her. Moreover, her self-destruction--drinking, suicidal thoughts--make perfect sense and seem quite rational given the circumstances.

Told over a period of years, in which she increasingly comes to a place of remembrance rather than shocked, raw grief, the book is beautifully written. There is real emotion here, but also craft. The early scenes in which her family is swept away in the wave and she clings to existence are breathtaking, literally. Later passages describing her children's clothes, toys, the empty house; the garden and the birds; the places she used to go with them: these are all heartbreaking.

Ultimately this is a story about how a life gets rebuilt when everything that made it a life--the people, the relationships, the activities--are gone. Deraniyagala has to piece herself back together, and she does so, slowly, painfully, and not always gracefully. I loved her honesty when she wondered why others were alive when she had lost so much; her concern that she was experiencing a hierarchy of grief by mourning her children and husband more than her parents. In her grief, she reevaluates the contours of self.

I did find myself tripping occasionally on the narrative, when Deraniyagala's class status inserted itself into the story. There were references to nannies, drivers, and personal security guards in Sri Lanka; there is much cross-continent travel, vacations on the coast, a life of at least some ease and social lubrication. These references to privilege in no way undercut the author's obvious and profound grief nor her lovely prose, but I did wonder (sociologically) about the other thousands upon thousands of victims of the tsunami, including those without homes in London, well-placed friends, economic resources, and the cushioning of class that, at least to some degree, mediates trauma and loss.