Up Close and Undivided Attention (Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje)

Member Name: TheChocolateLady

Product:	Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje
Date:	31/01/09 (249 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing prose, excellent story (or stories), overall beautiful book

Disadvantages: Not a conventional novel so it might not be for everyone

Michael Ondaatje is certainly my favourite author, but he's far from prolific, so I was thrilled to get his latest novel "Divisadero" and set all the other books on my reading pile aside for it, and I was not disappointed in the least.

It is almost impossible to give a plot synopsis of this book. Much like some of Ondaatje's other books, this isn't a narrative that follows set literary patterns or rules. And while I felt that there was a type of linear feel to the novel as a whole, the overall feeling I had was more of a shifting spiral. I'm not sure this makes a great deal of sense, but I guess you can't help what you feel about a piece of art. As the book opens we are introduced to two girls - Anna and Claire - who live with their father on a farm in northern California with a farmhand named Coop (short for Cooper). Technically these girls weren't biological sisters, since their father adopted Claire when he found her mother had died after giving birth to her. What's more, this happened the same week his own wife died after giving birth to Anna. After some investigation into the relationships between these four people, the book then shows how events tore them apart, focussing on Anna, Claire and Coop separately. With Anna being the sometimes narrator of the story, we also get involved in one particular segment of her adult profession, that being her research into the life of the poet Lucien Segura. The connection here is Raphael, the son of one of Segura's neighbours, and how he becomes involved with Anna. From there in the story we leave these initial characters and become fully involved in Segura's story, and his relationships which almost feels like we have been given two novels in one.

Or do we? The title of this novel comes from a street in San Francisco - where Anna lived at one point. In the book Ondaatje has Anna explain the origin of the name of the street probably means 'division' but also she theorizes that it could come from a verb in Spanish 'divisar' which means 'to gaze at from a distance'. In this, we find that the title of this novel is a metaphor for the book as a whole. Both the modern characters and the historical ones find their lives divided by something at one point. They feel connections as well - to each other, as well as their own pasts as things that have shaped their lives and brought them to the point where Ondaatje places them in his narrative. If we look at it this way, we find that Anna views Segura's life from this distance while at the same time sees her own life divided between her research and her relationship with this person from Segura's past. In fact, each of the different relationships in the story are carefully inspected using both possible terms of the definition of the novel's title. Moreover, the novel starts with a tight group of four people and watch them become divided by situations and life itself. In this way while the street is just a footnote in the story, the name is not just a metaphor for the action in the book, but also a perfect distillation of this novel as a whole. This is something that perhaps only a poet could do, and as Ondaatje is a poet, we shouldn't be surprised that he's achieved this.

While this might sound complex and unapproachable, I cannot stress just how wrong that impression would be. Ondaatje's prose is, as usual, very poetic while being smooth and inviting as well. This is Ondaatje's particular talent and one that I've yet to see equalled by any other author, past or present. Every word seems carefully chosen for its evocative value without any parts of the narration feeling the least bit stilted or bombastic. Ondaatje also doesn't bother with typical literary convention such as showing conversations within quotation marks or the additional "he said" or "she said" additions. While this might sound confusing, I can assure you that when you read this or any of his books, you'll never be unsure about what's going on. And even without punctuation, we can still feel the characters' speeches since he is so well able to give each character their own voice, while giving the descriptive passages a totally different feel altogether. This is typical of Ondaatje and I'm always amazed at how well this unconventional style works, and how comfortable it feels to read. Certainly this is one of the reasons why I adore Ondaatje's work so much.

Of course, this isn't the type of book that everyone will enjoy. The moods that Ondaatje puts into his books such that I've always felt like everything is being filmed in sepia in my mind. Again, I'm not sure this makes total sense, and probably sounds like Ondaatje's novels are overly sombre - but this is as far from reality as can be imagined. No, this isn't a comedy, but that doesn't mean there aren't brighter and more positive sides to this story, since there are. Its just that Ondaatje likes to set the stage for his characters in such a way that you feel both involved as well as distant from them. For this particular novel, this counterpoint works particularly well since we get both a present day story (Anne, Claire, their father and Cooper) as well as delving into one in the past (Lucien Segura). I should mention that this style doesn't make for a quick, easy read, despite its being a relatively short novel. This isn't a 'summer vacation' novel and you'll need to concentrate on this book, but once you start it, I'm sure you'll be happy to comply. Which makes me think that there's also a flip side to this novel's title, since I think this is a book you'll want to read very carefully - as the title of this review implies.

However, because of this, I also can't say that this book would be a good introduction to Ondaatje's work. If pressed, I'd have to say that "Anil's Ghost" is probably a more approachable novel than this one, as it is the most literarily conventional of all his writings. That said, if you've enjoyed any of Ondaatje before, or are looking for something that's in a totally different style from anything you've read before, I'd have to highly recommend that you read this book. The writing is superb and the stories here are fascinating with true-to-life characters you can believe in. What's more, this is a book that will absorb you and engage your imagination so much that you might want to read it all over again the moment you've finished the last page. That was the feeling I got when I finished it, and if I wasn't such a slow reader and didn't have so many other books I was anxious to read, I probably would have done that immediately. Since you can see I loved this book, of course I'm giving it a full five stars out of five, and hope that what I've said appeals to at least some of you.

Thanks for reading!

Davida Chazan © January 2009

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Technical Stuff:

This book is available new from Amazon for £5.99 or through their marketplace from £2.79.

Further information about Michael Ondaatje can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ondaatje which includes links to interviews about this book.

You also might want to see his page at the Random House site which is http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/results2. pperl?authorid=22801
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Summary: Michael Ondaatje's latest novel - truly another piece of art!