Divisadero

Product Details

Author : Michael Ondaatje
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780676979152
Number of Pages : 288
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2008-04-22
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Release Date : 2008-04-22

ASIN : 0676979157

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Customer Reviews

Beautiful. (2008-08-30)

The author's style of writting is what makes this book great. The story would not have been interesting if it wasn't for his way with words.

A Story within a Story (2008-08-28)

In Northern California teenage sisters Claire and Anna live with their father and work the family farm together with Coop, a boy who is brought into the family from a neighboring farm. Very quickly this family shatters. To say why, would be to give away a spoiler. So, sorry dear readers my lips are sealed!I will say that we do follow all three characters into their adult lives. Anna becomes a writer of biographies, which brings us to the second half of the book. She writes about the life of turn-of-the-century French poet named Lucien Segura. There was also another story within the story.This book is about the past, loss, and passion.To be quite honest, at times I had trouble following along. I wasn't always sure what family I was reading about until I read further. Then I would catch up and follow smoothly along until it happened again. I didn't dislike this book, but I do think it would have been better written as three short stories. I just didn't see the connection. That said, Ondaatje's descriptions of both landscape and characters were amazing.

Everything is collage (2008-07-21)

Michael Ondaatje writes in his new novel, "[T]here is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross." At one level "Divisadero" is such a collage, spreading scenarios across more than one hundred years and several continents. Initially seemingly disconnected events and individual stories are nevertheless intertwined in some way. They converge around Anna, the anchor in the narrative who brings the different segments together. At another level, Ondaatje's exquisitely written novel is about recurring themes of identity, love, loss and pain, and the potentially healing power of passing time and remembrance. Completely absorbing, I found it deeply moving and enriching. A book to be read more than once to be fully appreciated in composition and content.A certain mystique surrounds the title; its varied possible interpretations find their echo in the structure of the novel and the personal histories of the protagonists. According to Anna "divisadero" means "to divide" and also "to gaze at from afar". A pivotal experience at some point in each protagonist's life has broken its continuity, resulting in a major change or split in their life from then on. Some inner consolidation may be achieved as time allows for re-examination of the past and discovering of similarities in others. Ondaatje uses different voices and perspectives to bring to the reader more than one linear narrative. The novel's structure also reminded me of a musical composition: across the distinct 'movements' themes are nonetheless recurring, and innocuous motifs, such as the shards of glass, can take on symbolic character in their repetition; parallels in the protagonists' lives are slowly revealed and linkages established. With each reiteration, new aspects of the story are introduced for the reader to explore.The actual plot can be summarized very quickly. It is evidently not Ondaatje's primary motivation for writing "Divisadero". His interest clearly lies in exploring the essence of his characters, their feelings and sensuality, their interaction with others and their physical environments and finally, their ability to recover (or not) from deep trauma. A widower raises his daughter, Anna, and adopts an orphan girl, Claire, born on the same day, as a pseudo twin sister for her. Coop, son of a local farm hand, also an orphan, is added to the small family. When the girls are sixteen, a devastating event abruptly ends the until then mostly idyllic life in rural northern California. They break apart, each coping in a different way with what they experienced. "The raw truth of an incident never ends" Anna reflects later on. Claire's and Coop's stories are interleafed with Anna's. Coop's character, in particular, is expertly drawn, as he lives out the challenges of his youth.We meet "Anna" again, living in Southern France, as a biographer, researching the life of Lucien Seguro, a little known author who lived there nearly a century ago. She has since shed her name and former identity. Her life becomes indirectly linked to the writer she studies, in part through Rafael, who was connected to Lucien in a similar vein that Coop was connected to Anna's family. While the narrative switches to Seguro's life, his coming of age and the people surrounding him, we are led to make connections, see parallels. Ondaatje's sensitive exploration of the growing fondness between Lucien and his young neighbour, Marie-Neige, is one of the most touching and haunting love stories one can imagine. Comparisons are invited between Anna's life and Lucien's. At every stage, though, Ondaatje leaves us guessing who the narrator is. Is everything written by Anna? Nietzsche's "We have art, so that we shall not be destroyed by the truth", is initially introduced by Anna on page one of the novel, and later repeated. While we are receiving signals that Anna's recollections may not be necessarily the only version of the truth, Ondaatje leaves the question open to interpretation. In a wider sense, encompassing the whole novel, there are hints of an "invented life" - to make it less painful and to come to terms with her abandonment of her sister and Coop in a time of crisis. The beginning is in the end completing the collage created. [Friederike Knabe]

A lyrical digression, but a digression all the same. (2008-03-31)

I was planning to lambaste this book unmercifully for its seemingly inexcusable digression in the middle of the book, where it wanders away from its three main characters and becomes fixated on Lucien Segura, a French writer of an earlier era who seems only tangentially connected to the main narrative thread. But then at the very end I understood his significance as a parallel character to the father of the three main characters that form the focus of the book's beginning sections. Nevertheless, this understanding only partly excuses the self-indulgent digression evident in this novel, which I feel would have been much stronger had Ondaatje stayed with the characters who dominate its opening pages. By comparison, the Segura section, for all its lyrical beauty, lacks the compelling power of the earlier sections. Why did Ondaatje betray the reader in this insouciant fashion? Had he run out of ideas for his main characters? His choice -- to abandon these characters in mid-narrative -- seems perverse and inexplicable. This novel is by no means a success.

where is the plot? (2007-11-13)

I would be getting interested in a plot line and it would be dropped. The last part of the book - Lucien's life, was uneven (to me) and lacked a strong focus. I want a book with a plot and this did not fit the bill. Too introspective for me: more flesh and less soul please.

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