Serendib

P.S. Jimmy, thank you for a wonderful semester of writting, thinking, and creating.


a student from Jamestown   November 17, 2001
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It covered so many different feelings in life. I was especially drawn to the moments of discovery with his father. To be in your 40's and to be experiencing your very first journey with your own father is at first a shame that it didn't come sooner and a blessing that it finally did. Learning to know and appreciate your parents as adults is a remarkable thing. Hearing them tell stories that you never heard before, enjoying bits of everyday life with them, watching their eyes sparkle when a chance to play arises--those are all gifts. Thank you, Jim Toner, for introducing me to Sri-Lanka (teka-teka) and for allowing me a moment to know the child in you. I'm blessed to have been able to read your book.


Not an accurate representation   November 13, 2001
 6 out of 21 found this review helpful

As a Sri Lankan, I am thoroughly upset at the fallacies present in the book. Mr.Toner, has unfairly characterized Sri Lanka as a nation that has no infrastructure, no medicine, extremely disorganized with a dirt poor society. Living in a country for 2 years as a peace corps volunteer gives no insight to the complex social issues or the intricate details of the civil war in northern Sri Lanka, let alone writing a book.
Sri Lanka is a developing nation that has a 90% literacy rate, excellent educational facilities and a state sponsored health care system which is excellent. The regular problems plaguing developing nations is present in Sri Lanka but nowhere to the extent the author has made it out to be. The capital Colombo is a modern city comparable to other modern cities in the world. The author makes no reference to that, but goes on talking about how treacherous living in Sri Lanka is. He also goes on to talk about how an Air Lanka aircraft on which his father was a passenger had to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia due to a bomb threat, and after the emergency evacuation his father runs off into the Sahara!!! The Sahara desert as we all know is in North Africa and not in the Arabian Penninsula. Mr.Toner is a typical first time traveller who goes on to a distant land to "teach" the natives about the great "American culture" as he puts it and decides to write a book about it. Mr.Toner's father who at 70 something years is travelling out of the USA for the first time in his life talks about how hot and humid Sri Lanka is. He obviously has not visited Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or Florida in his lifetime. This books depicts Sri Lanka as a war-torn nation akin to Rwanda or DR of Congo, when in actuality Sri Lanka is a modern nation with a civil war confined to the north and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka.