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In the Skin of a Lion

Michael Ondaatje

3.88 · Rating details · 14,216 ratings · 895 reviews

Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in Ondaatje's Booker Priz ...more

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Paperback, 256 pages

Published January 14th 1997 by Vintage (first published 1987)

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· 14,216 ratings · 895 reviews

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Jun 06, 2017 Marita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Marita by: RK-ïsme

Shelves: 2017, north-america, favourites-2017, fiction, historical, classics-and-literary

4.5-stars

“Alice had once described a play to him in which several actresses shared the role of the heroine. After half an hour the powerful matriarch removed her large coat from which animal pelts dangled and she passed it, along with her strength, to one of the minor characters. In this way even a silent daughter could put on the cloak and be able to break through her chrysalis into language. Each person had their moment when they assumed the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibilit

4.5-stars

“Alice had once described a play to him in which several actresses shared the role of the heroine. After half an hour the powerful matriarch removed her large coat from which animal pelts dangled and she passed it, along with her strength, to one of the minor characters. In this way even a silent daughter could put on the cloak and be able to break through her chrysalis into language. Each person had their moment when they assumed the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for the story.”

Skins, whether real or metaphorical, feature quite prominently in this novel about early twentieth century Toronto. In fact, there are over thirty references to skin in this novel. Author Michael Ondaatje introduces us to a city with a vibrant, multicultural mix of people and exciting projects such as ”The bridge. The bridge. Christened ‘Prince Edward.’ The Bloor Street Viaduct.” He takes us to the tanners: ”Circular pools had been cut into the stone – into which the men leapt waist-deep within the reds and ochres and greens, leapt in embracing the skins of recently slaughtered animals." "They had leapt into different colours as if into different countries.” And later in the showers: ”They stood under the hot pipes, not noticeably changing for two or three minutes – as if, like an actress unable to return to the real world from a role, they would be forever contained in that livid colour, only their brains free of it. And then the blue suddenly dropped off, the colour disrobed itself from the body, fell in one piece to their ankles, and they stepped out, in the erotica of being made free.” And talking about skins, the professional thief, Caravaggio, for a brief period of time also acquires a bright blue skin, a liberating skin so to speak. As the city is being transformed, so too these workers change from being newly arrived immigrants, shed their old skins and become part of the city and its history.

Initially the plot seems a little fragmented, but hang in there as all these different strands are soon woven into a cohesive tale. It follows the story of the main protagonist, Patrick Lewis, who arrives in Toronto from the Canadian wilderness. Here he occupies various jobs, finds love, and learns some local history. We follow Patrick through his adventures, struggles and transformations which blend with the struggles of the workers and the history of Toronto and its landmarks.

The prose is beautiful and often has a dreamlike quality.

Quotes:

“Now, in the city, he was new even to himself, the past locked away.”

“He undreams himself, remembers she has left him.”

“Official histories, news stories surround us daily, but the events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle.”

“He has always been alien, the third person in the picture. He is the one born in this country who knows nothing of the place.”
...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Marcelo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended

Astounding. One of the best novels I've ever read. Ondaatje does things with language that should be almost illegal, giving us scenes that can be at the same time lush and heartbreakingly stark, weaving in and out of different timeframes and contexts with the fluidity and free association of memory. His depictions of the hard work these characters undertake in early 20th Century Canada (bridge building, logging, tunnel drilling under Lake Ontario in order to build a water purification plant) hav ...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Ben Babcock rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-read, canadian-author, historical-fiction, literary-pretentious, owned

It’s never a good sign when the first thing you do after finishing a book is to go to its Wikipedia page and scrutinize the plot summary for some hint of what happened.

For some reason, I always choose to read a complex or very “literary” type of novel on what turn out to be my busiest weeks. When I started In the Skin of a Lion, I was neck-deep in my unit planning for my English instruction course. (I developed a unit for Grade 9s studying A Wizard of Earthsea.) Even my impressive ability to fin It’s never a good sign when the first thing you do after finishing a book is to go to its Wikipedia page and scrutinize the plot summary for some hint of what happened.

For some reason, I always choose to read a complex or very “literary” type of novel on what turn out to be my busiest weeks. When I started In the Skin of a Lion, I was neck-deep in my unit planning for my English instruction course. (I developed a unit for Grade 9s studying A Wizard of Earthsea.) Even my impressive ability to find time to read was put to the test, and it didn’t help that Michael Ondaatje’s prose and narrative are both incredibly stylized and poetic. I’m starting to develop a guilty conscience for not liking books like this more, because there is nothing wrong with being stylized or poetic, so I can understand why Ondaatje’s writing appeals to some people. But my mood and the timing were such that my heart just wasn’t invested in this book, and that makes it very difficult for me to separate my apathy toward the act of reading it with any apathy I might feel as a result of the story itself.

I just didn’t pay attention to what was going on in this book. The narrative mostly follows one character, Patrick Lewis, son of an explosives expert. It jumps sometimes to a few other characters, such as Nicolas Temelcoff, with all of these characters related to Patrick’s narrative in some way. Ondaatje portrays the poor-to-abysmal quality of life of the lower class that laboured to construct some of Toronto’s greatest early twentieth-century achievements in city infrastructure. In the Skin of a Lion is a novel of blood, sweat, and tears of the immigrants who helped build one of the hubs of our nation. It’s ambitious, and in some sense I would agree that Ondaatje realizes his ambition.

Alas, I couldn’t quite stay along for the ride. Ondaatje plays fast and loose with flashbacks, and maybe this says something about my limitations as a reader, but I prefer a straightforward internal chronology. It would have helped if there were a single character to anchor me to the narrative, but they all feel interchangeable, even Patrick. There is no protagonist because there is no conflict, just the faceless shuffle against the background the inequity of life. Patrick seems to do things, once in a while, including some fairly risky actions with explosives, but I was too disengaged to be able to speak intelligently about why he might have done this.

The back cover bills this as a love story. A love story between whom? Patrick and Clara? Patrick and Alice? People and Toronto? There are times when it feels like one or all three of these … but those times are difficult to distinguish from each other. There is just an oppressive sense of bland sameness to every chapter of this novel such that even though I’m sure things happened, it never felt like they were happening. The present tense submerged the plot and did not let go until all its limbs had quite thrashing and, finally, went limp. And I never quite understood Patrick’s motivation—why was he so interested in digging into everyone’s past?

I am dissatisfied not with the book but with me. In my review of Napier’s Bones I talk about letting a book down, and now that sentiment has returned. It’s not a case of a book failing to live up to its hype; rather, I feel unable to judge effectively whether it did or didn’t do that. When I dislike a book, I want to be able to present cogent reasons why. I hate feeling like one of those people who just completely missed the point of the exercise. Yet the prospect of re-reading this book when my mind is less taxed does not particularly excite me.

Such is the ultimate refuge of subjectivity, I suppose: we readers are humans, not book-devouring robots. (I know, I know, hard to believe!) We have moods and phases, and sometimes a perfect storm of time and tasks and not-the-right-book combine to throw us off our groove. I can neither recommend this book nor caution others against it. It’s definitely beautiful, in its own way, and I can see why it has attracted acclaim. But it is not universally accessible: it demands a certain amount of stillness, to channel Yann Martel for a moment, that I couldn’t quite provide this time around.

I have another Ondaatje kicking around somewhere. Maybe the second book will be easier than the first. But that is for another week.

...more

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Apr 05, 2017 Khashayar Mohammadi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: idiosyncratic, masterful-prose, north-american-lit, writing-inspiration, favorites, erotic, canadian

Ondaatje is incredibly familiar. He has the schizophrenic narrative of Faulkner and the fragmented working class romanticism of Raymond Carver. Its interesting how much I adore Ondaatje while he reminds me of one of my mortal enemies (I'm talking to you Faulkner!). His visual brand of prose-poetry reminds me more of a filmmaker than a writer. His nostalghic exploration of Canada, and specifically Toronto increased the book's appeal for me. I had a hard time getting into Ondaatje's world, to a po ...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: canada, audible, hf, immigrants, 2-itunes-library, 2018-read, love

The writing, the manner by which the author has woven fact into a fictional tale and the book’s central message explain why I like this book as much as I do. We are given a story that is carefully planned and well executed. Every detail is there for a purpose. Even section titles have been carefully considered. The “finished product” is very good.

We are told at the start that every novel should begin with the line:

“Trust me, this will take time, but there is order here, very faint, very human. ...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Maciek rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian-literature, historical-fiction, read-in-2013, reviewed

In the Skin of a Lion is a hazy, dreamlike novel, which transports its readers to the city of Toronto in the early 20th century. This is the time when countless immigrants came to the city - escaping misery, wars and poverty that was their daily life in the Old World. The glimmering lights of the New World shore brightly across the ocean, and they journeyed across it for weeks, seduced by their promises of a new and better life. These masses of immigrants - often poor and uneducated - built, for In the Skin of a Lion is a hazy, dreamlike novel, which transports its readers to the city of Toronto in the early 20th century. This is the time when countless immigrants came to the city - escaping misery, wars and poverty that was their daily life in the Old World. The glimmering lights of the New World shore brightly across the ocean, and they journeyed across it for weeks, seduced by their promises of a new and better life. These masses of immigrants - often poor and uneducated - built, formed and shaped the city into a vibrant multicultural metropolis that it is now. They had only their hopes and dreams, but they also had the will and strength to make them real. The hard labor of these men and women is directly responsible for the creation of countries that have since developed and prospered, but the very people who made them are mostly unmentioned and forgotten by history.

Ondaatje's novel is fiction, but filled with real events which took place in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada during that time: the construction of the Prince Edward Viaduct between Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue; suppression of workers strikes and demonstrations by the police chief Dennis Draper; the murders of Viljo Rosvall and Janne Voutilainen, two Finnish-Canadian labor unionists, and the mysterious disappearance of Ambrose Smalls - a famous theare magnate who owned several venues across Ontario, and whose disappearance was never solved (even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was involved in it at one time, but ultimately chose not to pursue the case). Oondaatje apparently spent months in the City of Toronto archives to research material for the novel - and the best part is that a lot of material has been digitized and can be accessed online here, allowing us to see Toronto's history for ourselves - including the earliest known photographs of the city.

Ondaatje introduces several characters, some of which will appear again in his later novel, The English Patient. Sometimes their stories touch and correlate and sometimes they don't, dissolving like wisps of spider silk in the early morning sunlight. I suspect that years from now it will be difficult for me to remember the details of the novel, but what will stay with me are the images Ondaatje manages to conjure swiftly and without any real effort: a group of Scandinavian immigrants skating across a frozen river in a small town in Northern Ontario, defying its wilderness and iciness; wind throwing off a nun from an unfinished bridge, and a brave builder who risks his life to save her; a man escaping from prison and into the country, staying by himself in remote lakeside houses, the silence and vastness of the area having an almost preternatural quality. Is this how pioneers felt?

Like many immigrants the novel searches for its own goal but doesn't find it, leaving us with a collection of brief insights into the lives of its characters and surrounding. Still, Ondaatje in places writers well enough to warrant an extra star, and I look forward to reading more of his work. ...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Teresa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A book full of sights and more, signifying much, including, and in a big way, one of my favorite themes -- that of the 'little' people, the ones 'behind the scenes' of history, the ones we'll never know.

After reading this book, I feel like I've been to Ontario and in particular Toronto during the early-20th century. Toronto is a teeming, vibrant multicultural community, so much so that the main character from backwoods Ontario feels like the outsider. Though to be completely accurate, he probabl ...more

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Jul 10, 2010 ·Karen· rated it it was amazing

Shelves: canada, favourites

A full five star endorsement for a novel that has a mesmeric, hallucinatory quality. Images as powerful and poignant as a dream, narrative that slips and weaves and ducks between people, places and time, and an impressive sweep of invention that catches the breath. Ondaatje uncovers the story of those whose labour created Toronto landmarks in the early twentieth century, deftly knitting up truth and myth, revealing the lives of those who were forgotten in the official version of history.

Actuall ...more

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Jan 06, 2008 Alison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: lovers of intimate cityscapes and dreamy histories made vivid with breathaking style.

There is a scene, in the very beginning of this book, during which Patrick Lewis, primary voice among the the half-dozen or so protagonists, watches Scandinavian men skate home over a frozen river on a dark winter's night in Northern Ontario, carrying handfuls of burning cattails over their heads. Ondaatje, who is the rare poet capable of writing great fiction, describes the scene thusly:

"It was not just the pleasure of skating. They could have done that during the day. This was against the nig ...more

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Aug 08, 2013 Moses Kilolo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I got through the first fifty or so pages solely because of the poetic language of this book. Otherwise I would have meandered my way, got lost somewhere, looked around for help, and finding none, tossed the book away.

I am not a big fan of so many characters, so many voices, and so much happening in a book. But with this one I remained patient. And lord I'm I not grateful. It seems that I have been richly rewarded.

This is book is set in Toronto in the '30s. And except for Patrick, the main prot ...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Stephen P rated it really liked it

An exalted language rendered simply. Ondaatje lays down on a wood grained table, an axe, fallen trees, a log jamb, explosives, the building of a bridge and a waterworks. The concrete tools of realism. As he speaks in his mesmerizing words his agile hands tent and curl, through the fingers arise images of a hallucinogenic prose. In short declarative sentences he calls forth the onset of a first LSD trip; the shock of boundaries melting away, the particles of the world slowed and oozing with meani ...more

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Feb 16, 2017 Laure rated it really liked it

Shelves: seasonal-challenge-winter-2016, fiction

Despite the poetic language, this was quite a quick read. I will re read it again though as the language is complex and there are things that still do not make totally sense in my head. This is will not be a chore as the language is beautiful and eminently evocative. I wish the plot and characters' motivation had not been so difficult to fathom at times, lost is some land of magical realism. Great book still.

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Aug 09, 2013 Will rated it it was amazing

Shelves: random-80s-90s-00s

Probably one of the best novels I ever read, better even than "The English Patient".
Time to read it again.

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Jul 05, 2009 Marie rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

In the middle of this novel, Ondaatje writes:

"The first sentence of every novel should be: "Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.'"

And this seems to be Ondaatje's philosophy about his novels.

I read this book because we are headed to Toronto at the end of August, and this was described to me as the "quintessential Toronto novel." However, I found myself scanning pages and anxiously hoping that I would get to the end. Not signs of a good novel for me!

Some ...more

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Aug 13, 2007 Andy rated it it was amazing

The best book I've read in 5 years.

But everyone I recommend it to hates it.

The prose is poetry, and the genetic connection to Ondaatje's earlier prose-poem works like "Coming through Slaughter" is obvious. But the power of this book resides in his characterization - you come to be absolutely devoted to the individuals - and I choose that word deliberately - that populate this novel. Though sparingly described, they seem more familiar than the characters so exhaustively cataloged in much pomo f ...more

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Jul 22, 2010 Kaelee rated it did not like it

Honestly, I utterly despised this book. I had no end of people telling me that this was one of the most divine, perfectly written books EVER. What I saw when I read it was literary masturbation. I'll concede Ondaatje has an elegant way of stringing together lots of beautiful words and phrases and moments, but I don't think that that alone can make a book. Others have said they think the characters in this are so real as to make you utterly devoted to them. I struggled to sympathise with a single ...more

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May 30, 2018 Ova - Excuse My Reading rated it really liked it

Ondaatje is so talented. This is a slow, stunning read. I was lucky to read a good Turkish translation but would very much love to read the original again.

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Jan 02, 2010 Adam rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1970-present, prose

Ondaatje. I understand why people like at least some of his work. I understand why his prose is appealing, though it's the sort of thing nobody can do without occasionally seeming laughable (not even Virginia Woolf). I sort of get the appeal.

But I'm really sick of IMPORTANT LITERARY FICTION in Canada and really, really sick of IMPORTANT LITERARY FICTION's dominance of the Canadian literary scene. This trend seems to really have kicked off with Ondaatje's GGA win for The English Patient. Before ...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Laura rated it really liked it

Recommended to Laura by: From Bookcrossing

Shelves: canadian-literature, contemporary-fiction, read-2009, bookcrossing

In this book, Patrick Lewis describes the lives of the people who surround him in Toronto in the 1920s. Patrick begins to learn, from their stories, the history of the city itself.

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May 21, 2013 Iida rated it it was amazing

Shelves: desert-island-books, fiction, favourites, 2013, history

This novel is the reason novels need to be written. Ondaatje is always a stunning writer, his prose brushing up against poetry in the very best of ways, but In the Skin of a Lion rivals The English Patient with its imagery. I re-read this novel about once a year, and every time the first cracking of the spine is an almost spiritual experience.

Ondaatje is a rare writer of historical fiction in that his background knowledge is clearly immense, but he doesn't feel the need to lay it all out in the ...more

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Jun 23, 2009 Shauna Hruby rated it liked it

There were moments of beauty and visual acuity, but more often there were moments of muddlesome bemusement. Story arcs left hanging, dangling tantalizingly (a nun falling off a bridge to be caught in mid-air, but then what...?)--abandoned, but returned to eventually. Satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. There is a quote in the book that seems to sum up my feelings of this book:

"Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the

...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Sarah rated it it was amazing

First things first: I do not think Michael Ondaatje gets enough credit. I know that he wrote "The English Patient," which became an epic romantic film with Ralph Fiennes. But not only is "The English Patient" a wonderful book, but ALL of his books are beautiful. "In the Skin of a Lion" may be my favorite.

I have a great love affair with Ondaatje's prose, which gently lilts and probes and carefully illuminates the most telling truths about his characters. There are very few other writers whose wor ...more

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Jun 07, 2007 graycastle rated it really liked it

Shelves: contemporary

This is my favourite of Ondaatje's novels, and I am quite the Ondaatje fan, so. This is pomo in ways that are by now familiar: interested in collage-style historical documentation, nonlinear, imagistic, in opposition to grand narratives, obsessed with artistic creation, etc. And I love that stuff, because it is awesome. But what really makes this work is Ondaatje's prose, which is lush and visceral and delicious - he invests all of his characters with a specific kind of depth resultant from the ...more

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Sep 28, 2008 Mary rated it it was amazing

I'm currently rereading this small novel which I think is a masterpiece of restrained and beautiful writing. Ondaatje can infuse eroticism into the struggles of the working class--in the 1920s in this novel. He introduces the characters here that will reappear in The English Patient. It is about so many things: how immigrants cope with a new land, how they learn the language of that land (hilariously by listening to Fats Waller songs in addition to going to plays and memorizing the lines along w ...more

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Nov 16, 2016 may ❀ rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 200-pgs, for-school, canadian, why-is-this-a-book

If you were to ask me what this book was about, I wouldn't be able to answer you. Literally, 90% of this book didn't make sense to me.

Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately) I'm not obliged to write a review about it since I only read it for school. - I would have DNFed it ages ago if I could. :p

Kay, byeeeee.

2 stars!

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Jan 27, 2015 Mattia Ravasi rated it it was amazing

This 'humble epic' about Canada's working class in the early twentieth century is a memento to their sacrifices and to the injustice of their condition, a book made so much better by its lack of political extremism and by its dry, solemn prose; and it is also a wonderful and heartbreaking love novel.

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May 25, 2018 Amanda rated it liked it · review of another edition

I loved the writing, and I managed to read it fairly quickly, but overall I wasn't too invested in the characters and plot. This was one of his first novels, and I look forward to reading more of his. I absolutely loved his next book, The English Patient.

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Feb 23, 2017 Fatma rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian, school, own, historical-fiction, poc-author

This was actually not bad, but I didn't really enjoy it so I can't give it more than 2 stars.

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Feb 27, 2017 Alan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

compelling, beautiful, breathtaking, poetic. Will fill your head with unforgettable images - a nun falling from a half built bridge caught by a daredevil construction worker, tunnels illuminated by torchlight under a lake, explosions and prison escapes, necklaces, cows stuck in rivers, a room filled with hanging mysterious puppets slowly twirling, a man painted like the sky, clothes and all, light and sound filling your senses. Sometimes I didn't believe the dialogue, but was carried along anywa ...more

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Feb 14, 2008 Celeste rated it liked it

Recommended to Celeste by: Book Club Selection

Overall, my thoughts are mixed... while this is a superbly written book and I enjoyed it, I didn't love. And I found the large breaks in time in the story confusing and a bit frustrating. The story is beautifully written. And I really enjoyed the historical aspects of the building of Toronto. However, I was frustrated by the lack of character development; just as you would get into a character's story, the character would be dropped.

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About Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje

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He was born to a Burgher family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portuguese origin. He moved to England with his mother in 1954. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. Ondaatje studied for a time at Bishops College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto and received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's Universit ...more