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A review by nattynatchan
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
4.0
Ondaatje writes with such haphazard beauty i love it sm
the language here is as good as anything you'd find in The English Patient; life is likened to a villanelle with its circular, ecstatic and haunting beauty, the subtle disintegration of a relationship between parent and child compared to "a small vessel crossing the equator unaware, so that in fact their whole universe was now upside down."
the novel is very wongkarwai/chungkingexpress-esque in its composition of two disjointed narratives, which bleed into and shimmer off one another as you read on. there isn't any final resolution given to any of these plots so that, by the end of the novel, we feel as tentative and terrified as any of these characters do.
"He did not know whether she was a lens to focus the past or a fog to obliterate it." the same can be said about this book.
the language here is as good as anything you'd find in The English Patient; life is likened to a villanelle with its circular, ecstatic and haunting beauty, the subtle disintegration of a relationship between parent and child compared to "a small vessel crossing the equator unaware, so that in fact their whole universe was now upside down."
the novel is very wongkarwai/chungkingexpress-esque in its composition of two disjointed narratives, which bleed into and shimmer off one another as you read on. there isn't any final resolution given to any of these plots so that, by the end of the novel, we feel as tentative and terrified as any of these characters do.
"He did not know whether she was a lens to focus the past or a fog to obliterate it." the same can be said about this book.