Wisdom from the Island(s)

'It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. How to be there with the dead and yet still be here, on the spot, with the living.' She gave him a sad little smile and added, 'It isn't easy.'

A quotation from Aldous Huxley's Island, which I think is the point of Romesh Gunesekera's Reef and explains why Island is integral as an intertext, like Sherlock Holmes is to Norbu's The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes--especially in light of the Tsunamai disaster.