Divisadero - Hardcover

Ondaatje, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307266354 ISBN 13: 9780307266354

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2007

Synopsis

Fleeing the violence that destroyed her family and separated her from her sister Claire and Coop, an enigmatic young man who lives with them, Anna finds refuge in south-central France, in an isolated house once occupied by a writer, while she struggle to reconcile the past and present, the demands of family, love, and memory. Reader's Guide available. 200,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"Ravishing and intricate . . . Few experiences in contemporary fiction are as sensual and absorbing as making one's way through the pages of an Ondaatje novel. And there is a different, a deeper delight in going through his books a second time to see the secret stitching . . . The question that insistently haunts these elliptical and delicate works is how much their very beauty takes us away from the wars and scenes of great pain they describe, and to what extent, in courting art, they leave real life behind. "Divisadero "is an epic of intimate moments . . . The book is, among other things, a parable of contemporary America . . . When people call Ondaatje a poetic novelist, they are referring in part, of course, to his rare gift for language and observation. A scene of a boy on a runaway horse during an eclipse is as astonishing and hallucinatory as any such passage I can remember reading. Yet the deeper aspect of his poetic background is that his narratives proceed with the interlaced complexity of a long lyric poem . . . Part of the special delight of reading one of his books comes from the impression we get of a deeply curious traveler opening his worn suitcase and letting all the exotic bric-a-brac he's collected on his journeys tumble out . . . Each of the romances in the book is gorgeous and singular in its effects . . . Ondaatje's ability to fashion scenes that are at once exact and suggestive accounts not only for the sensual tingle of the books, but also for their literary pleasures . . . There is always a clear and unhurried spaciousness to Ondaatje's paragraphs; they proceed with the deliberation and hush of a work of meditation, even while turning their attention to thingsof the secular world . . . "Divisadero" extends the liberating and original territory of that earlier triumph ["The English Patient"] so unforgettably that it's hard, on finishing, not to turn back to the opening page and start all over."
-Pico Iyer, "New York Review of Books"
"Exquisitely crafted and imbued with Ondaatje's acutely sensitive intelligence, "Divisadero" pulls its readers inside the novelist's craft like being inside an intricate pocket watch to learn its movements."
-Bob Hoover, "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"
"Ondaatje's best books are kaleidoscopic meditations on memory, violence, time and sexuality are held together less by linearity than by rhyming action, thematic echoing and inspired juxtaposition . . . One doesn't come to Ondaatje for resolution. One comes for the language, the discreet imagined moments, the exact metaphors, the turn of a phrase-and for the thrill of watching a writer attempting, and for the most part, succeeding, in his desire, through juxtaposition, to make the world more than it is."
-Ethan Rutherford, "Minneapolis Star-Tribune"
""Divisadero "echoes the writer's earlier fiction in its mastery both of storytelling and of fine writing . . . It is beautifully intricate, yet credible, a subtle play on cause and effect . . . Ondaatje's exquisite use of imagery propels his story of loss and displacement to an impressive level of fictional power . . . A subtle, stirring novel, a fine book and an arresting one."
-Nancy Schiefer, "London Free Press" (Ontario)
""Divisadero "is a river of images and scenes that flows through the characters' lives like fate. So, reader, embark and journey in awe of this river master . . . "Divisadero"is alive, pulsing and irreducible . . . Wonders and genius [have] shaped this design . . . It is a collage, though never random, which artfully revisions the temporal into a masterpiece that will permanently affect the reader."
-Mary Jo Anderson, "Chronicle Herald "(Halifax)
"""Comparisons of Ondaatje to Faulkner and Garcia Marquez are apt. His sense of time, like theirs, is one of curling, recurring flow . . . "Divisadero "finds Ondaatje in familiar form, which is to say eloquent, finely tuned form . . . [It] wends a crooked path, which is part of its great magic and beauty . . . The second part of the novel moves supplely from one character to another. Along the way come many gorgeous passages, many dreamlike sequences . . . Ondaatje is a very sexy writer and understands well the ins and outs of the courtly-love relationship . . . Ondaatje has always been a real craftsman, spending his one true commodity, time, with the utmost patience and care."
-Jon Raymond, "Bookforum"
"A bleakly moving rendering of lives disrupted by brutality and loss . . . Ondaatje demands a reader's trust, an acceptance that a work of fiction can accommodate the peculiar alignments that bless and bedevil everyday life . . . The crosscurrents of his writing flow and ripple against each other as poems might. Sequences of images set themselves out in their individual beauty and lucidity . . . Give in to Ondaatje and his language will seduce you . . . He is at his best let loose in the dream world of his warmblooded imagination . . . There is something endearingly human about this book, for all its art."
-Erica Wagner, "New York Times Book Review"
"The more you give "Divisadero," the more itgives in return . . . Mr. Ondaatje does not write in mundanely linear ways, nor does he see events as isolated instances. There are always webs of memory, slips of time and divisions in experience to break the spell of an ordinary world . . . "Divisadero" has a highly literary sensibility . . . Anna finds meaning in her own life by plumbing the history of Lucien, now a famous dead literary figure[;] trust Mr. Ondaatje to express [this] exquisitely . . . Since Mr. Ondaatje writes with such grace, he brings a haunting, sensual delicacy to this latter part of "Divisadero," . . He is a writer of intense acuity. His eminence is well earned."
-Janet Maslin, "New York Times"
"[The] division between the world as it is and the world as we imagine it to be is what gives our lives such poignancy, Ondaatje seems to be saying . . . This is a beautiful idea . . . With this elegant, singular book, Michael Ondaatje proves that it is not too brilliant a lodestar to shove straight into the heart of a novel."
-John Freeman, "Sunday Star-Ledger"
"["Divisadero "has] a heck of an opening. And Ondaatje delivers on the promise of that beginning . . . His poetical skills are much in evidence in this novel . . . He's prodigiously talented, conjuring richly detailed scenes with a minimum of words . . . Beautiful and haunting."
-Soyia Ellison, "Atlanta Journal-Constitution"
"The prose is rich in image and ideas . . . Doubling adds resonance to the Segura chapters, which are full of charming anecdotes . . . Ondaatje may well leave you hungry-for more of Claire, for the fate of Coop, for Anna in old age, for a sample of Segura's writing or for an easier, neater plot. But he could never leave you empty, the way even the fattest beach read can."
-Jeffrey Burke, "Bloomberg News"
"Hauntingly beautiful . . . What an unusual, and unusually rich, experience it is to read "Divisadero," the new novel by Michael Ondaatje . . . Ondaatje expertly shift[s] into different voices and tenses, disrupting the conventional chronology with the easy grace that has become his hallmark . . . There are countless examples of perfect phrasing in "Divisadero," and those who spend time within its pages will discover even more proof-not that they needed it-of Michael Ondaatje's peerlessness as a storyteller and poet.
-Jeff Turrentine, "Washington Post Book World"
"Magnificent . . . Ondaatje pulls off the plotlines masterfully . . . He introduces memorable characters [and] scenes of majestic texture and captivating imagery . . . From its first to last telling sentence, this aesthetic tale, poetic with human detail, is a rare and precious pleasure."
-Don Oldenburg, "USA Today"
"One can consider "Divisadero "a novelistic evocation of Buddhist ideas . . . In ways too myriad to enumerate, the luminous last hundred pages complement and refract what came before."
-Art Winslow, "Chicago Tribune"
""Divisadero" plays whimsically with chronology and memory, with fantasy and historical fact . . . Ondaatje also employs a more unusual tactic: having followed three California characters from childhood into their 30s, he spins around and takes two mature French characters in order to trace their histories back in time. It's a brilliant maneuver . . . Misty abstraction is always the danger of lyrical imagination [but] Ondaatje's success as a novelist is due, in large part, to his consistent ability to avoid that pitfall."
-Marcela Valdes, "San Francisco Chronicle"
""Divisadero "is powered by narrative force and contains finely chiseled characters. [It] is also a book profuse with poetic imagery, profound themes and the delicate architecture of open verse . . . Stunning bits of lyrical observation turn up on almost every page . . . Breathtaking."
-John Barron, "Chicago Sun-Times"
"Ondaatje knows the value of dramatic action and strong, sympathetic characters, and is working at his peak in this book."
-David Walton, "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review"
"An exquisitely realized novel . . . The most soulful writers, like the great jazz musicians, will keep finding new ways to play the same gorgeous notes again and again. Michael Ondaatje's voice-his prismatic perspective on time and memory, on the elegiac repetitions of life-is so particular and distinctive that you can spot it at 20 yards . . . "Divisadero" is a haunting, meticulously conceived novel . . . [It has] the texture of a hand-woven tapestry . . . Ondaatje is a master at constructing breathtaking passages dropped in as casually as stars in a night sky."
-Gail Caldwell, "Boston Globe"
"With this masterful novel, the Man Booker Prize--winning author uses the art of storytelling to reflect and refract the truth we cannot bear to look at full-on . . . As ever, Ondaatje writes with mesmerizing prose and authority . . .

"Ravishing and intricate. . . . Unforgettable."
--Pico Iyer, "The New York Review of Books"
"My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. . . . ["Divisadero" is] a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. . . . Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Jhumpa Lahiri
"The more you give "Divisadero," the more it gives in return . . . . [Ondaatje] is a writer of intense acuity." --"The New York Times"
"Brilliant. . . . "Divisadero" plays whimsically with chronology and memory, with fantasy and historical fact." --"San Francisco Chronicle"

"Ravishing and intricate. . . . Unforgettable." --Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books"My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. . . . [Divisadero is] a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. . . . Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Jhumpa Lahiri"The more you give Divisadero, the more it gives in return . . . . [Ondaatje] is a writer of intense acuity." --The New York Times"Brilliant. . . . Divisadero plays whimsically with chronology and memory, with fantasy and historical fact." --San Francisco Chronicle

-Ravishing and intricate. . . . Unforgettable.- --Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books-My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. . . . [Divisadero is] a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. . . . Ondaatje's finest novel to date.- --Jhumpa Lahiri-The more you give Divisadero, the more it gives in return . . . . [Ondaatje] is a writer of intense acuity.- --The New York Times-Brilliant. . . . Divisadero plays whimsically with chronology and memory, with fantasy and historical fact.- --San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher:

Guest Reviewer: Jhumpa Lahiri

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0307266354
• ISBN 13: 9780307266354
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274