Book 48 - Michael Ondaatje "The Cat's Table"

Michael Ondaatje "The Cat's Table"(Knopf)

This is a fascinating story about the adventures that three boys experienced travelling from their native Sri Lanka (though it was still called Ceylon then) to England in 1954.

The "cat's table" was name given to the table furthest from the Captain's Table to which the three unaccompanied boys were assigned for their meals, along with various "socially challenged" adults. Michael, the narrator, is eleven years old and is travelling to England to stay with his mother (divorced from his father three or fours years earlier) and then to undergo an English education. He becomes friendly with two other boys in a similar position: Cassius, aged twelve, who is almost feral and has already been suspended from his Sri Lankan school a few times, and Ramadhin, an asthmatic Moslem boy whose frail health curtails his capacity to join in with all the others' exploits.
Ondaatje captures the sense of adventure and mischief perfectly (despite his disclaimer in the "Author's Note" at the end of the book it is difficult wholly to believe that this is not at least partially autobiographical). The personalities of the adult characters are revealed gradually, and the readers sees things that the young Michael doesn't, though this only adds to the savour.

Among other sources of wonder that the boys quickly discover are a prisoner, who is kept manacled all of the time and whose only exercise come from being allowed to walk around the decks at night, under armed supervision, and a circus troupe who revel in bizarre entertainments.

All in all this was one of the finest rites of passage novels I have read.