Wave Hardcover - 2013

Media reviews

“This is the most powerful and haunting book I’ve read in years…. In A Whaler’s Dictionary there’s the line, ‘Ishmael’s impossible task is to write about a world that falls outside the realm of experience.’ And what Sonali Deraniyagala has done, in this beautifully written book, is to similarly give us a portrait of an event and its after-effects that we have never experienced or witnessed. At the same time she has brought back to life in this stunning memoir all those she lost, so much so that we will never forget them or their lives.”
—Michael Ondaatje
 
 “An amazing, beautiful book.”
—Joan Didion

“Wave, is a memoir for the ages – one of the saddest stories a human being could ever tell, told brilliantly, with devastating insight into the heart of love and death…. An eloquent monument to the deep human necessity of storytelling.”
—John Barber, Globe and Mail

"This is possibly the most moving book I have ever read about grief, but it is also a very, very fine book about love. . . . While in Wave love reveals itself by the bleak intensity of the pain of absolute, irreplaceable loss, it is in the end a love story, and a book about the importance of love.”
—The Guardian (U.K.)
 
“Wave contains solemn and essential truths. . . . We are in some way fortified for our own inevitable, if lesser, struggles. . . . In accurately describing her family’s life . . . she rescues [them] from uncaring, careless fate.  Losing them plunged her into darkness.  Writing about what happens brings them into the light. . . .”
—Teju Cole, newyorker.com

“Stories of grief, like stories of love, are of permanent literary interest when done well . . . A form of greatness reverberates from Deraniyagala’s simple and supple prose.”
— New York Times

“Like Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, Wave captures the elusive shape-shifting nature of grief.”
— Newsday
 
“A bracing and ruthlessly self-confrontational memoir.”
—Boston Globe
 
“It’s almost inconceivable that a memoir of such exquisite beauty could arise from an event as tragically horrific as the Asian tsunami of 2004.  But Sonali Deraniyagala has created exactly that. . . . Both jaggedly raw and beautifully crafted at the same time.  Above all, it speaks to the power of the human spirit to survive, to love, to remember.  It reminds us that these often mundane lives of ours and our families' must be cherished, because we never know when an extraordinary event may come along to change it all.”
— Toronto Star
 
“[A] spare, radiant book. . . . The extremity of Deraniyagala’s story seizes the attention, but it’s the beauty of how she expresses it that makes it indelible. . . . It’s one of art’s mysterious ironies that a book created out of loss make the lost ones live for the first time in the minds of complete strangers.
—Salon.com
 
“Few of us can imagine recovering from such a catastrophic loss.  Fewer still would be inclined to share it.  Yet there is something in Deraniyagala's unsentimental, unadorned account of the event and the long aftermath that draws us into her grief and madness, holding us spellbound.  Resisting her conversational embrace would be futile, one inhuman tragedy compounded by another.  We read on, afraid to leave her so desperately alone.  We lose ourselves willingly in what is perhaps the saddest story that has ever been told.”
— Hamilton Spectator
 
“Extraordinary. . . . I didn't feel as if was going to cry while reading Wave.  I felt as if my heart might stop. . . . She has fearlessly delivered on memoir's greatest promise: to tell it like it is, no matter the cost.  The result is an unforgettable book that isn't only as unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light.”  
—Cheryl Strayed, New York Times Book Review


 “Out of unimaginable loss comes an unimaginably powerful book. Wave is unflinching as it charts the depths of grief, but it’s also, miraculously, a beautifully detailed meditation on the essence of happiness. I came away from this stunning book with a new appreciation of life’s daily gifts. I urge you to read Wave. You will not be the same person after you’ve finished.”
—Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

"In rinsed-clear language, she describes her ordeal, surreal rescue and deep shock, attaining a Didionesque clarity and power.  We hold tight to every exquisite sentence. . . . An indelible and unique story of loss and resolution written with breathtaking refinement and courage."
—Booklist
 
“Wave is a haunting chronicle of love and horrifying loss. The heartfelt writing manages to render the absence of the loved ones – the void, and the pain of it – in such a beautiful way that what was lost emerges as a new life form, one whose flesh and sinew are memory, sorrow, and undying love.” 
—Abraham Verghese, bestselling author of Cutting for Stone

"A devastating but ultimately redemptive memoir.... Deraniyagala's matter-of-fact account is all the more powerful for its lack of literary flourish, though the craft and control reflect an exceptional literary command.  Every word in these short, declarative sentences appears to have been chosen with great care, as if to sentimentalize the experience or magnify the horror (as if that were possible) would be a betrayal of all she has lost.... Excellent.  Reading her account proves almost as cathartic as writing it must have been."
—Kirkus (Starred Review)  

“Rarely are we given a story of such narrative force and poetic simplicity . . . Being spared, Deraniyagala seems doomed to spare herself nothing. Wave is a beautiful offering to readers. Bravissima.”
—Mary Karr

"Unmitigatingly honest, immeasurably potent. . . . This massively courageous, tenaciously unsentimental chronicle of unthinkable loss and incremental recovery explodes -- and then expands -- our notion of what love really means."
—MORE Magazine