Divisadero

by Michael Ondaatje

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2,424 ratings, 3.50 average rating, 722 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		16%
4		35%
3		32%
2		12%
1		2%

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published

May 29th 2007 by Knopf

binding

Hardcover, 288 pages

isbn

0307266354 (isbn13: 9780307266354)

description

From the celebrated author of The English Patient, comes another breathtaking, unforgettable story, this time about a family torn apart by an act of v...more

[close] From the celebrated author of The English Patient, comes another breathtaking, unforgettable story, this time about a family torn apart by an act of violence. Divisadero is a rich and rewarding read, one that Jhumpa Lahiri</i>, in her guest review for Amazon.com (see below), calls "Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Daphne Durham

Guest Reviewer: Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award for her mesmirizing debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her poignant and powerful debut novel, The Namesake was adapted by screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and released in theaters in 2007.

My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. I began Divisadero as soon as it came into my possession and over the course of a few evenings was captivated by Ondaatje's finest novel to date. The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins, interchangeable, inseparable. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls' lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But Divisadero is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book and giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. But the stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twinning, Ondaatje's method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in rereading this beautiful book--which I wanted to do as soon as I finished it--that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author's genius is here: the searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life's most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence--subjects that have shaped Ondaatje's previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to Divisadero, an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. --Jhumpa Lahiri

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09/17/07

Tony DuShane rated it:

Read in August, 2007

Hello, I run a literary 'zine called Cherry Bleeds and this was the book of the month for the site...so here's me plagiarizing myself:

I haven't read any other work by Ondaatje or seen "The English Patient". I have to admit, I wasn't terribly interested in reading "Divisadero", but I make sure to read a few best sellers here and there just to keep up with what the public thinks is decent writing.

For the most part, I don't get past page 50. I try to give...more

Like this review? yes (6 people liked it)

1 comment

12/04/08

Trish rated it:

(review of isbn 0307279324)

bookshelves: 2008-read, fiction

Read in December, 2008

recommended to Trish by: Tash

God I did not like this book. Really, really did not like it. I read all the 4 and 5 star reviews, I get what people are saying, and I'm just not there. Why get us interested in characters and then abandon them? and why spend time telling us boring things about them (like a whole paragraph describing how she planted seeds in the field by scattering them instead of burying them) and then we find out about major dramatic events only in one passing sentence told as a part of someone else's narr...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

1 comment

06/30/08

Serenity rated it:

Read in July, 2008

I just finished reading this book. I found it beautiful, haunting, and while at first I was dissatisfied with the loose and ultimately unresolved nature of the novel, I later decided to accept it and consequently appreciated it much more. Ondaatje is a poet as well as a novelist, and he lets poetry infuse his fiction richly. In this work, I feel that he has taken it one step further and stripped the events in the book to their essence, as in a poem. Read in that way, it no longer matters whet...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

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09/17/07

Mark rated it:

bookshelves: recent-faves

Read in September, 2007

This book is full of the wisdom of a writer who is both a poet and a novelist. Divisadero: the divisions between our lives and the lives of others, and even between our most secret lives inside of us too secret to admit to ourselves. Divisadero: the connections between the divisions that cause us to yearn for the comfort of togetherness, of intimacy. On a palimpsest of a novel painted over by centuries of division and that longing for togetherness, Ondaatje brushes words that will stay with me ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

2 comments

06/03/07

Ryan rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in June, 2007

This might bear more fruit on a second reading, but as it is right now I would consider this a lesser Ondaatje than the brilliance displayed in Anil's Ghost and Booker Prize winner The English Patient. The first two-thirds of the text spans the young lives of a mixed family in Northern California and Nevada--the trio of sisters Anna and Claire with adopted farmhand (and John Grady Cole archetype) Coop. There's a predictable/inevitable running through of paradise attained and lost for this fami...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

1 comment

04/28/08

Emily rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in June, 2008

For those who have not read an Ondaatje book before, "Divisadero" may not be a good first start. A newer reader may be expecting a plot that rises and crashes as much as the one developed in "The English Patient," which Ondaatje became known best for after the success of the film version. (And even if you haven't watched the movie 10 times over like some of us, you get it: War, lust, affair, secrets, heartbreak, the end.)

But for those who have eaten, lived and bre...more For those who have not read an Ondaatje book before, "Divisadero" may not be a good first start. A newer reader may be expecting a plot that rises and crashes as much as the one developed in "The English Patient," which Ondaatje became known best for after the success of the film version. (And even if you haven't watched the movie 10 times over like some of us, you get it: War, lust, affair, secrets, heartbreak, the end.)

But for those who have eaten, lived and breathed his words relentlessly since that wonderfully told story, "Divisadero" is a welcome return to what Ondaatje brings beneath plot: an endless exploration through history and language, and an intimacy with characters unsure of their situations.

I couldn't turn three pages of "Divisadero" without learning a new word or anecdote or strategy to a different way of life. I'm convinced the man must read every book in the library to have such a catalog of knowledge. Did you know there's a word the old poets used for when a person calls their lover by a different name? How did people break down a rough field's terrain to turn it into rich soil before the days of Miracle Grow, Home Depots and pesticides? Ondaatje drops the answers and details to little bits without speaking above the reader or losing his characters in his explanations.

In reading "Divisadero," we walk through the different lives of a farmhand, a gambler, a gypsy and a writer. We learn not only about their trade, but also their fears and secrets, information casually unfolded much like a new friendship. For all that Ondaatje reveals about his characters, you almost feel as if he's trying to not reveal too much - he's holding a hand up to the camera at points, closing a door before too much air comes in. Their details fall underneath a loosely woven plot which is also detached, and has holes in it. This may be frustrating for those looking for a resolution - one demonstrated by actions and conclusions made by characters and narrators - but once you get past the untraditional structure, it feels very much like real life. These are lives like many of ours; even in good circumstances, our relationships and identity are divided by past and distance and conflict. We won't always know what brought us to here or there, or what made so-and-so act like that, or how to bring everyone back together after an almost unforgiveable act. So we piece our stories together, as Ondaatje has his characters do here, with photographs and stories and memory, or the absence thereof. (less)

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

2 comments

07/18/08

David rated it:

Read in July, 2008

recommended to David by: Catherine

There is not much I can write about Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero without echoing what all the other reviewers have already written: Ondaatje is a craftsman. His writing reveals decades of self-scrutiny, of each year wanting to say more with fewer words.

Divisadero is about love and the loss thereof. Love falls victim to the jealous wrath of a protective father, to drug addiction, to the minor details of our daily lives, and the greater mystery of the entropy of desire:

Luc...more There is not much I can write about Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero without echoing what all the other reviewers have already written: Ondaatje is a craftsman. His writing reveals decades of self-scrutiny, of each year wanting to say more with fewer words.

Divisadero is about love and the loss thereof. Love falls victim to the jealous wrath of a protective father, to drug addiction, to the minor details of our daily lives, and the greater mystery of the entropy of desire:

Lucien and his future wife left the curtained parlour and walked arm in arm for an hour or two along a road banked with poppies and into a marriage that created two daughters. There would be years of compatibility and then bitterness, and who knew when that line was traversed, on what night, at what hour. Over what betrayal. They slipped over this as over a faint rise in the road, like a small vessel crossing the equator unaware, so that in fact their whole universe was now upside down.

Much of the novel takes place in the parts of California that even most Californians don't visit: Petaluma, Grass Valley, Santa Maria, Lake Tahoe. I have strong memories of all four places and Ondaatje's descriptions are not only apt; they also manage to capture the aesthetic of the 'other California', far from the bleached hair and blonde sand of Southern California and the cosmopolitanism of the Bay Area. I can only assume that his descriptions of provincial France are equally percipient.

There is also, it turns out, a link between this novel and Brazil. On the acknowledgements page of the book facing the back cover, Ondaajte writes:

The song 'Um Favor' (partially described on page 73) by Lupicinio Rodrigues in essence began this book.

Here is that partial description from page 73:

All of the world there must be people like us, Anna had said then, wounded in some way by falling in love - seemingly the most natural of acts.

He told her there was a song he no longer performed that had to do with all of that. It was about a woman who had risen from their bed in the middle of the night and left him. He would hear evidence of her in villages in the north, bust she would be gone by the time the rumour of her presence reached him. A song of endless searching, sung by this man who until then had seldom revealed himself. His tough fingers would tug the heart out of his guitar. He'd sing this song to those who had grown up with his music over the years, who were familiar with his skill at avoiding the limelight. He knew his reputation for shyness and guile, but now he conceded his scarred self to his friends. 'If any of you on your journeys see her - shout to me, whistle ...' he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere for him to hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as though he were no longer on the stage.

And a related quote from Divisadero, originally muttered by Nietzche:

We have art so that we shall not be destroyed by the truth.

For your listening pleasure, here is Lupicinio Rodrigues' 'Um Favor'. (Right click, save as).(less)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

2 comments

01/01/08

Mark rated it:

bookshelves: recentlyread

Read in January, 2008

Maybe 4 +half—Ondaatje’s novels always seem somehow flawed, because they’re not like any other author’s novels. They leave me a little confused and not a little mystified—but a confusion stemming from awe and wonder. Ondaatje’s novels are poems—or, rather, collections of poems in prose of varied pace and pitch—and they can’t be read by the ‘normal’ rules of novel-reading. So, to call “Divisadero” a strange and beautiful concoction is just to say it’s a Michael Onda...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

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07/14/07

Sara rated it:

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Sandy

Another outstanding offering from one of my favorite authors. The narrative travels back and forth in time, forging links between the past and the present. Ondaatje gives clues in the content as to the critical themes. "All over the world there must be people like us. . .wounded in some way by falling in love--seemingly the most natural of acts." "We live permananetly in the reoccurence of our own stories, whatever story we tell." ". . .what is most untrustowrthy ab...more

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08/02/08

Charlaralotte rated it:

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in July, 2008

Well...When you've already written "The English Patient," it's hard to do much better. Unfortunately, it also seems to mean you don't get good editorial advice anymore.

This book has the makings of two good, separate books that would be tied together by a slim plot connection. As it is now, the two story lines are poorly integrated & feel forced.

I found the Cooper story dull, if only because I'm tired of Texas Hold 'Em poker & Las Vegas & America in general.
...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

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04/25/08

John rated it:

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: anyone French

A very disappointing read. A book that started off with a bang and then just faded in the middle. This fairly recent book was available for sale at the inflated price of $30 in Singapore bookshops so when it popped up in the American Club Library, I figured it was a smart, cost-efficient move. It was since buying the book would have been a waste.
The man can write. His account of a tragic incidents in the lives of two young girls and an orphaned hired hand on a northern California farm cr...more

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01/31/08

Miriam rated it:

Read in May, 2008

Oh my god. Every once in a while and this happens like maybe once a year, I find, you read a book that is just the RIGHT BOOK at the right time. And this is it. Amazing. Gorgeous. It's hard to even say. Because there is also a roughness to it, to the characters that is almost gripping. That and, ta-dah it is so intricately structured. I love structures that I want to think about. And this is one. I want to just turn it over and read it again and again.

It also makes me want to go back...more

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06/22/08

Pat rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2008

This book is beautifully written. It is three disconnected stories in a mosaic. Each beautiful and complete in itself. The stories are linked to each other through a common character. I loved all the characters and was sad to leave them behind as the book moved on to the next story. In this way, it seemed to me to be a more of a collection of short stories sharing characters (similar to Franny and Zooey) than a novel.

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

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06/09/08

Janice rated it:

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

I very much enjoyed this book. But it was a little confusing toward the end. so I think it may need a second read. I came away with beautiful imagery of how people, specifically all the main characters fragment themselves. I think that the format of the book is also a story/metaphor of this fragmentation.

I'm not saying that any of his other books has straight forward, linear, single protagonist narration, but this literally felt like the narration was shattering towards the end in...more I very much enjoyed this book. But it was a little confusing toward the end. so I think it may need a second read. I came away with beautiful imagery of how people, specifically all the main characters fragment themselves. I think that the format of the book is also a story/metaphor of this fragmentation.

I'm not saying that any of his other books has straight forward, linear, single protagonist narration, but this literally felt like the narration was shattering towards the end into more and more characters and more and more time periods. I felt at the end I was not perfectly clear about whose story I was reading... which I believe was part of the point, but also not completely pleasant. It was a bit confusing.

I also did come away with the "moral" that we all see our own story everywhere. It was an interesting break in the narrative for me... literally bringing me out of the complex web stories to look at myself and why I read and question why I read and how I look at others. Do I constantly draw my story on others... over and over? of course I do. Which brings me to another theme.

Is this only because I have felt trauma? Then there is this theme of trauma and who has not felt trauma and in whose perspective is trauma? Yours. Not others. So any event that heavily/intensely impacted you and formed you negatively may be trauma. But there is also the perspective of keeping things in perspective; remembering the human connection and how your trauma is not perceived so by others.

It was also a study in how people get over trauma. The sudden break, the different persona, the contstantly taking different personas, risk taking drama seeking, running away, writing/art, seeking stories to absorb yourself in, being a work-a-holic, adopting new families, do-gooding, denial...

But this may only be my take on it because I am drawing my story over and over again. But regardless of all this, I did enjoy it. On a basic level, there are beautiful lines and imagery in it.
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10/22/08

Laura rated it:

Beautifully written, and frustratingly unfulfilling...but I think that may be the author's point. The three storylines (filled with a multitude of engrossing characters) are divided by time and place but are supposed to intersect with one another symbolically, spiritually and metaphorically. Sound confusing? It is. it is also hard to articulate a cold hard opinion of this book; to do so lessens the effect of the book. Ondaatje's style is so lyrical, I'd find myself stopping and wanting to write ...more

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02/02/08

b borkent rated it:

Read in March, 2008

as usual Ondaatje incorporates some beautiful imagery and there are some really outstanding sections of this book. However, on the whole, a disjointed piece with a whole lot of exposition and background description, but no sense of resolution to 2 out of 3 parts of the story. The good part, near the end, is just a back story about a character that is already dead and has almost nothing to do with the rest of the book at all. One of the very main characters is conveniently beaten to crap and has ...more

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03/12/09

Stephanie rated it:

Read in July, 2007

MICHAEL Ondaatje is notorious for his non-linear – hence sometimes frustrating – narratives. Take his most commercially successful novel to date, The English Patient, which netted him the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning movie in 1996.

Though the movie streamlined the plot, focusing on the love story of the titular character, the novel is actually more complex, interweaving the lives of four characters whose stories do not obviously relate to each other, wh...more

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02/27/09

Karen rated it:

(review of isbn 0307279324)

I found this book just as a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. When I began reading this book I was intrigued and completely captivated. It seems as though the excitement happened all at once in the beginning. The rest of the book seemed to try to live up to the excitement and life of the beginning but fell short. I anxiously read each page hoping all would end up right. Maybe that was the point of the author in that life is not a fairy tale with happy endings.
I also wonder that A...more

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12/30/08

Eric rated it:

(review of isbn 9870410189)

Read in December, 2008

It appears as if the last novel I'll complete this year has turned out to be the best one of the year. It used to be that my life would stop with the appearance of a new Kundera novel, but now that distinction belongs to Ondaatje. Divisadero is like another English Patient, but I mean this in the best sense: it's not a replica of that earlier novel, but a continuation and enlargement of its central themes (nomadism, personal and historical wounds, blurred boundaries between past and present and ...more

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11/22/08

Jeanne rated it:

(review of isbn 9870410189)

Read in November, 2008

I love to read Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient is one of my all time favorite reading experiences. Coming Through Slaughter made me see New Orleans through a new set of eyes. Anil's Ghost brought human rights to the fore in my mind for the first time. And Divisadero linked me to the region of France that gives me my Frenchness. I always enter another world and smell it as I inhale the words on each page. And this was how I felt for most of this book.

He divided his book in half...more

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quotes from this book

"How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part." More quotes...