Warlight in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 15, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, i-spy

Warlight is definitely literary fiction, but it also operates as an upper level espionage novel. I have no trouble slotting this one up there with le Carre's A Perfect Spy and John Banville's The Untouchable. Like both those novels, Warlight is about more than I-Spy. It's about historical context and historical crimes, it's about individuals making choices, with consequences playing out years and decades later. To some extent, I think Ondaatje does this with all of his novels (the ones I've read Warlight is definitely literary fiction, but it also operates as an upper level espionage novel. I have no trouble slotting this one up there with le Carre's A Perfect Spy and John Banville's The Untouchable. Like both those novels, Warlight is about more than I-Spy. It's about historical context and historical crimes, it's about individuals making choices, with consequences playing out years and decades later. To some extent, I think Ondaatje does this with all of his novels (the ones I've read). I'm also a fan of The English Patient, but even at their best some of the early novels, filled with memorable and often odd moments, also struck me as uneven. It's like the poet was battling the novelist. Not so in Warlight, which I feel achieves a dark and beautiful balance. It still has its memorable moments. One I'll never forget is that of a female ethnographer (a relatively minor character) flying in a glider high above English Channel, monitoring the tricky weather on the eve of D-Day. What a strange and heroic image. It's the stuff of myth, but it's also rooted in fact. I remember thinking to myself only Ondaatje (both poet and novelist) could pull that off so wonderfully.

I'm aware I've not gone into the details of the novel itself. It's a bit like something from Dickens (1945 version) or perhaps J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun is closer. The story is about a brother (Nathaniel, age 14) and sister (Rachel, age 16) seemingly left in the care of a band of protective (and eccentric) criminals, by their parents (a distant and emotionally damaged father, and an intense but distracted mother ("Rose")). They are apparently heading to Singapore because of the father's new job assignment. World War 2 meanwhile is raging. The story is told through Nathaniel's voice, and it ranges back and forth through time and memories, supplemented further by what Nathaniel discovers years later, working in the archives (for British intelligence?) scrubbing evidence of British espionage wartime activities from the files. It's there he finds out more about his mother, and others. With the bits and pieces of what he knows, and what he remembers, he lets his imagination fill in the gaps. That act in itself is an act of poetry, as well as a necessary, if incomplete, remembrance. ...more

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Nov 16, 2018 Nancy H rated it it was ok · review of another edition

When fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his older sister Rachel are abandoned by their parents in post-WWII London, Nathaniel spends his life trying to find answers to where they went, and especially, what his mother did in the war. He discovers that there are lies upon lies, and the people entrusted with watching after them will not give him any straight answers. He does the best he can to get by, as does Rachel, but events conspire to drive them apart, and eventually lead Rachel to despising her ...more

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