William's review
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
This is where i learned that sometimes we enter art to hide within it.
Michael Ondaatje has the most fantastic of writing styles; wonderfully evocative, strikingly rich, with seemingly never ending depths. His ability to cover multiple generations in locations around the world at the same time is stunning, with Divisadero being one of his most ambitious novels to date.
Ondaatje's trademarks as detailed above are all present here. It's a brilliantly written novel, with the splintering of a family unit leading to the separate-but-always-intertwining storylines and trains of thought. Anna, one of the family members, finds herself in France, researching a writer from a previous generation, whose life (in her mind at least) bears some uncanny resemblances to her own. Thus, the first half of the novel (Anna and her family) is linked to the second half (the writer's life) by the parallels drawn between the two.
The novel demands close reading in order for the links to make the...more
Michael Ondaatje has the most fantastic of writing styles; wonderfully evocative, strikingly rich, with seemingly never ending depths. His ability to cover multiple generations in locations around the world at the same time is stunning, with Divisadero being one of his most ambitious novels to date.
Ondaatje's trademarks as detailed above are all present here. It's a brilliantly written novel, with the splintering of a family unit leading to the separate-but-always-intertwining storylines and trains of thought. Anna, one of the family members, finds herself in France, researching a writer from a previous generation, whose life (in her mind at least) bears some uncanny resemblances to her own. Thus, the first half of the novel (Anna and her family) is linked to the second half (the writer's life) by the parallels drawn between the two.
The novel demands close reading in order for the links to make the...more
