DIVISADERO by Michael Ondaatje
Review Excerpt:
Some years ago, after Michael Ondaatje had written "The English Patient," I finagled an invitation to a private reading held by the Canadian Consulate for an exclusive group of business executives. Upon arrival, my husband and I were quickly unmasked as fakes, but, enduring the slings and arrows of whispered remarks and sidelong glances, we held our ground and remained for the reading. When Ondaatje appeared, I found him a simple man in dress, humble in manner, and a diffident reader of his works. I recall thinking that if only I wrote prose like his I would strut, not fret, my hour upon the stage.
After reading this introduction, you'll probably not be very surprised by my confession that when it comes to Michael Ondaatje's works I'm like a besotted teenager when faced with the object of her desire. I find his words magical, his creations dreamlike. Which brings me to "Divisadero," Ondaatje's most recent novel, a much debated and often maligned work.
In "Divisadero" Ondaatje explores the bonds of family: the family given us through blood-relation and the family we choose. Anna, is the only daughter of a Northern California widowed farmer who adopts another girl, Claire, when Anna's and Claire's mothers both die in childbirth. Born just hours apart, Claire becomes Anna's "twin." The orphaned son of a neighboring farm couple, Coop, is already part of the family. "Divisadero" is the story of these three. We meet them briefly as teenagers, see the family torn apart, then follow each of them as they continue their separate lives. Claire and Coop meet again, accidentally, but providentially.
Coop's story seems to strike some reviewers as the least satisfactory, charging the writer with having created and then abandoned this character. Coop represents the random violence all of us often face in life through war, fate, or of our own making. Coop's parents were murdered when he was just a boy, he is taken into this neighboring family, then expelled, cruelly and violently. Although he is a temperate man, violence follows him like his own shadow until Claire gently guides him home. This, to me, is a very poignant scene and a most satisfactory conclusion to Coop's story.
But Anna is the focus and storyteller of "Divisadero." Although she leaves home and country, her siblings and father are never far from her heart and mind. She finds her soulmate in the past life of Lucien Segura, a poet whose writing and life story she explores as she settles into his house in the small village in Southern France and chooses his "adopted" son as companion. This is where Ondaatje's writing turns truly magical. As Anna's and Segura's stories intertwine, the scenes become stunningly sensual, gorgeously trancelike.
When I finished "Divisadero," I felt such a loss, I had to re-read this book at once. I wanted again to take part in the lives of the ill-fated Marie-Neige and her husband, Roman, an incarnation of the enigmatic Coop, all raw rage, which he is unable to verbalize. I wanted again to eat a simple meal of herbs and onions grown in the garden of a small farm house in Southern France on a warm summer's day. And I wanted again to dance with no purpose with a cat. So find yourself a quiet corner in a garden or a sun-filled room and let one of our generation's greatest writers awaken your senses, touch your heart, and seduce you with this magic dance called "Divisadero."
- Login Or register To Post Comments
- Send To A Friend
Irma Fritz says:
A CHARMER WITH TOO MANY COOKS?
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” is a most charming book, indeed. It made me want to book a trip to this quaint little British island located off the coast of France. It also made me want to go about calling people “lovey.”
The writer Juliet Ashton, living in post-WWII London and looking for inspiration for her next book, receives an inquiry from a Mr. Dawson Adams of Guernsey Island. A correspondence ensues with him, as well as other island dwellers, all members of “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.” While explaining the odd name of their society, and how it came into being, the members fill the writer in on their hardships during the Nazi occupation. While Juliet is being wined and dined by the debonair Markham V. Reynolds, Jr. in London, it’s not Mark, but the Guernsey islanders who steal her heart. Fascinated, she decides to seek them out.
The novel is written in epistolary form, which works nicely during most of the book. At first, Juliet writes from London and receives answers from Guernsey, from her publisher, Sidney; and her childhood friend, Sophie. However, once Juliet is on the island, she reports her daily activities and whatever information she gleans from the islanders with little response coming back to her. This does disturb the symmetry of this winsome novel. In addition, when Juliet’s London beau Mark follows her to the island to propose, this charmer has been transformed into an ogre. I didn’t buy it. Could not the author have found a kinder, gentler way of allowing our Juliet to fall into the arms of her true Romeo without resorting to vilifying poor Mark? I think I found the answer to my question after reading Mary Ann Shaffer’s dedication to her niece Annie Barrows. Due to Ms. Shaffer’s illness, Ms. Barrows ultimately finished the book. Not to discount the abilities of Ms. Barrows, an author in her own right, but I'm guessing what we have here is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
My objections are minor ones. The novel’s message that literature can lift you up during trying times is one I have always found to be true in my own life. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” is a charmer. It will not only steal your heart but, I predict, it will increase tourism to this little British isle.
Irma Fritz says:
“THE READER” AS ALLEGORY
I love movies and during Academy Awards season I try to see as many of the nominated best pictures as possible. If the film is based on a book, of course, I also want to read the book. So, here is my book review of "The Reader," which made its way to film pretty much intact. Although it didn't bring home an Oscar for "Best Adapted Screenplay" kudos to the writers who did an excellent job!
“The Reader” by the German writer Bernhard Schlink is a slim work. In a narrative of a mere 224 pages, thinly cloaked as a love story, the writer takes all Germans--both pre- and post WWII generations--to task for the crimes of the Holocaust.
The story begins when a young boy becomes ill on his way home from school. A woman helps him. He’s a good boy, from a nice family, living in a nice home. Once recovered, and at his mother’s urging, he takes flowers to the woman who helped him when he became ill. Thus begins the May-December romance between 15-year-old Michael Berg and 35-year-old Hanna Schmitz.
Let’s look back at the day of the rescue, the day Michael vomits at Hanna’s doorstep. He is ill, wretched, miserable, and embarrassed. She assesses the situation and takes charge. The assistance she offers is decisive and efficient, accomplished as effortlessly as the “Anschluss” of Austria. Or, in the author’s words, “When rescue came it was almost an assault.”
The young Michael, whom Hanna calls “the kid,” has never known a woman like her. Hanna is clearly from a different social class than his own family and friends. She is uneducated, works at menial jobs, and lives in a shabby, but clean apartment. Hanna makes no effort to seduce, yet beneath her stern exterior, she is oh so seductive. And like his parents, Hanna is emotionally unavailable. The pleasures she offers come on her own terms. As the relationship unfolds, he is at a loss to explain the times when her cool demeanor gives way to irrational outbursts. Warning signs of a troubled psyche to be sure, but there is no arguing with Hanna’s anger; there is only acquiescence. “The kid”--eyes on the prize—submits.
Which young man or--if we accept the metaphor of Michael Berg as a stand-in for the German people--which country in the throes of infatuation heeds such warning signs? Smitten with a Fuehrer who would lead them away from wretchedness, who would turn shame to triumph, the German people submitted as eagerly as young Michael did. Thus, “the kid” traded away the innocent pleasures of his youth for the guilty secrets of adulthood, as willingly as Hitler’s Germans surrendered their innocence for a taste of sin.
Then one day it’s over. Hanna is gone, and Michael will never again find another woman who is able to take him to such heights of passion or depths of despair. The end of their affair is a shock to him, just as the end of the Nazi regime must have been a shock to the German populace. Abandoned by their Fuhrer, who escaped into death, they’re left alone to explain their mad dream of the Third Reich and to face the accusing eyes of the rest of the world.
Michael and Hanna meet again when he’s a law students sent to observe the trial of Auschwitz prison guards. She is one of them. During the trial, Michael discovers the secret she’s kept all her life, a secret she’s too ashamed to reveal. This secret will not absolve her from guilt, but decrease her lifetime sentence to a mere few years. Yet she keeps silent, as does he. Whose secret is he protecting? Hanna’s or his? Just as his father kept silent about his role during the Nazi regime, Michael, who, by his actions as a boy linked his life to hers, now keeps silent as well.
As an adult, Michael Berg comes to exist in a state of emotional suspension. He says, “The worst were the dreams in which a hard, imperious, cruel Hanna aroused me sexually; I woke from them full of longing and shame and rage. And full of fear about who I really was.” What an awakening it must have been for the German people when the dream was over, the truth revealed.
In the end, neither Hanna’s imprisonment nor her death, like the death of Adolf Hitler, can atone for the silence of two generations of Germans. I applaud Bernhard Schlink for breaking that silence with his excellent novel, “The Reader.”
Irma Fritz says:
DOA: REVOLUTIONARY ROAD IS DEAD ON ARRIVAL
Although "Revolutionary Road" made it to the screen and garnered a couple of Oscar nominations (but no wins), I didn't bother to see it after reading the book. Here is my book review:
“Revolutionary Road” is the story of a couple who feel trapped in their traditional roles of mother/housewife, of father/provider. While Yates is a skilled writer, his main characters, Frank and April Wheeler, fail to illicit sympathy or even interest. This is truly unfortunate as the plot is a universal one. Many a young person, be that of the 1950s generation of "Revolutionary Road" or the 2009 generation, has a dream of becoming someone unique, a dream often dashed by the need of making a living.
April and Frank Wheeler are a young couple who consider themselves artists of some kind or other. While reliving their parents’ lifestyle of suburbia, replete with home, kids, and a mind-dulling job to pay for it, they ridicule the very life they’re living. If truth be told, it’s hard to feel empathy for the Wheelers. They’re so completely self-involved, they have little time even for their children. When April Wheeler bombs in her community theater acting debut, she promptly gives up and blames everyone else but herself. Frank Wheeler, while protesting to despise his father’s career choice, goes to work for the same firm. When April comes up with a nutty escape scheme so Frank can quit his job and “find himself,” the jig is up. While he agrees, he has no real intentions to go through with it. When Frank confesses an office affair, April’s non-reaction doesn’t ring true. At this point, the story disintegrates into one useless discussion after another, one silly scene followed by another. April has an affair with a neighbor she despises. Another neighbor’s crazy son, the author wants us to believe, is the only character that speaks to the truth, but actually none of the characters ring true. Tragedy follows tragedy as the story limps to an improbable ending.
In “Revolutionary Road,” the real tragedy is that Richard Yates never fell in love with his own characters. Since the writer didn’t care to explore the true depths of his characters’ emotions, I pronounce this novel DOA.
Irma Fritz says:
ASTON VS. AUSTEN
There is something of the grave robber in a writer who pens a sequel to a dead author's story. I am talking about Elizabeth Aston who wrote “Mr. Darcy’s Daughters: A Novel,” intended as a sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” I noted with interest that Elizabeth calls herself "Aston" while Jane, of course, was an "Austen." Cleverly chosen pen name, I assume?
Still, remembering Colton’s maxim that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and keeping on hand a good dose of Coleridge’s “suspension of disbelief,” I thought Aston pulled it off quite well.
In “Mr. Darcy’s Daughters,” the girls are perfectly modeled on the original Bennett girls of “Pride and Prejudice.” Our modern Aston pretty much matches the 19th Century voice with a bit more modernity and some juicy scandal thrown into the plot. I was fine with both. While the Darcy twins at times were exasperating to the point where you want to smack them, after all is revealed and hurt feelings have been soothed, they were not that much wilder than their parents’ generation.
Aston is not Austen, but she doesn’t try to be. Unlike Austen, Aston is not a social critic or a writer who explores manners and mores of her time. She describes her creation as “full of societal intrigue and romantic high jinks,” in other words an entertaining romance, and this she delivers.
Elizabeth Aston is a skilled writer who gives us an entertaining good read. Graham Greene, whom I would call a great writer of an important body of literature, did not want his works labeled as such. He simply called them entertainments. I think what’s good enough for Greene is good enough for Aston. Although I aspire to create art in my writing, I know I am happy to have my readers entertained by my writing.