If you enjoy books that will make you fall asleep, I would recommend The Cat's Table. But if you're looking for an interesting an exciting book, this is not the book for you. I found myself reading 10 pages and then dozing off. The characters are boring, and the plot is bland as well. Michael Ond...
Running in the Family is a memoir in the truest sense of the word, as memory plays a central character in the story from the first paragraph to the last. Memories both recent and past of Ondaatje, but also the solicited memories of his eccentric family, usually given over a meal or while drinkin...
I've shared my admiration of this man before, but that won't stop me from saying again and again how absolutely exquisite I think he is. What strikes me about Handwriting is that it is so very personal and what impresses me is that it is even vulnerably so. It's as if he bled on the page for a w...
I had high expectations coming into this book of poems by Ondaatje. The only other work that I had read from him was The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, which was recommended to me by my independent study teacher my senior year of high school. I thank him so much for introducing me to Ondaatje,...
In the Skin of a Lion is a striking and spellbinding piece of literature. It poses questions that deal with our humanity and makes us question our perspective. The book takes place in the 1920’s and 30’s, and follows Patrick Lewis, an immigrant to the city of Toronto. Through his character we are...
When I first experienced this novel, I was a freshman in college. My grades had been poor because the journalism major I had thought I wanted to pursue turned out to just be a series of courses on how to write with hot air and the unnecessary rules that bind that style of writing--it was clear th...
I wanted to love this first novel of Ondaatje, but I am left feeling it is like a jazz improvisation that doesn’t achieve flight enough to linger long in the mind. My disappointment feels similar to looking for a Picasso Blue Period in the origins of his mastery and turning up instead an aborted...
I obtained a copy of Paris Stories on the recommendation of a friend, who suggested that I compare the short stories of Canadian writer Alice Munro to those of another Canadian-born writer, Mavis Gallant. I have read many of Alice Munro’s short story collections and was pleased when she won the ...
I was well into Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje’s very fine latest work, thinking about how appropriate the title was, remembering that Divisadero (Sp. for “divided”) Street in San Francisco once was a major dividing line in the city but unable to remember what it separated. I’d have to look it up, ...