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Michael Ondaatje
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Divisadero Paperback – 1 June 2008

by Michael Ondaatje (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 328
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It is the 1970s in Northern California. A farmer and his teenager daughters, Anna and Claire, work the land with the help of Coop, the enigmatic young man who lives with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until they are driven by an incident of violence - of both hand and heart.
Written in the same sensuous prose for which Michael Ondaatje's fiction is celebrated, Divisadero is the work of a master story-teller.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Bloomsbury Pb
  4. Publication date
    1 June 2008
  5. Dimensions
    12.9 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    9780747592686
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0747592686
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

'Hauntingly beautiful ... What an unusual, and unusually rich, experience it is to read Divisadero ... 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' Washington Post Book World 'Magnificent ... From its first to last telling sentence, this aesthetic tale, poetic with human detail, is a rare and precious pleasure' USA Today 'Plumply imagined, deeply romantic but vividly traumatic ... This novel bravely jostles the uncomfortable edges of literary storytelling' Alan Warner, Guardian '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' Jhumpa Lahiri

Book Description

A story of possession and loss, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0747592683
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Pb; 1st edition (1 June 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780747592686
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0747592686
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 328

About the author

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Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje is the author of several novels, as well as a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the 1992 Man Booker Prize, was adapted into a multi-award winning Oscar movie, and was awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Médicis; and Warlight was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

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Top review from Australia

Neil Whalebone
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful novel exploring what it is to be in a family
Reviewed in Australia on 12 November 2023
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A beautiful novel exploring what it is to be in a family
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Top reviews from other countries

Sharris
5.0 out of 5 stars As beautifully lyrical as you could wish
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 December 2023
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Reminiscent of the English Patient and a touch of Cognac MacCarthy at times. Lyrical linking of characters through time, each with their own internal beauty. As wonderful a read as you could wish for and a book to which I will return.
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Liuchuan
5.0 out of 5 stars Divisadero
Reviewed in Canada on 2 November 2012
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It is awsome's quality. I received very soon from the store after I order onlie within a week. I thank and love it not even 'Like'.
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Roger Brunyate
5.0 out of 5 stars A Poetic Diptych
Reviewed in the United States on 15 June 2008
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Michael Ondaatje is a poet, and even as a novelist he writes as one. I don't mean simply his mastery of the English language; that is a given. At times, he is almost Olympian, as when describing the metamorphosis of a marriage: "There would be years of compatibility, and then bitterness, and who knew when that line was traversed, on what night, at what hour. Over what betrayal. They slipped over this as over a faint rise in the road, like a small vessel crossing the equator unaware, so that in fact their whole universe was now upside down." But he can switch effortlessly to the here and now, describing a fight in a thunderstorm, or a poker game in a casino, with an immediacy that makes the writing almost invisible. He can conjure up images that fix themselves indelibly on the cinema of the mind (or on the big screen, as anybody who has seen the movie of  THE ENGLISH PATIENT  will know); my favorite is a two-page description of a gypsy boy and his horse caught in a total eclipse in the South of France. One sentence must suffice: "Grey rain started falling in the half-light, though it was the wind that bewildered everything, arcing the trees down so they hovered almost parallel to the ground."

Ondaatje cannot describe what happens without also evoking how it feels. But he seldom attempts to describe a feeling directly. Rather, he creates something else to stand beside it, illuminating it by association, from the side rather than full on. A simple example is the consummation of the marriage between a French peasant, Roman, and his very young bride. He goes out in the moonlight to wash in the rain barrel outside the cottage door; after a while, she follows him and washes also. "After that she turned and put her arms out along the thick rim of the barrel where in the water was the moon and the ghost of her face. Roman moved against her, and in the next while, whatever surprise there was, whatever pain, there was also the frantic moon in front of her shifting and breaking into pieces in the water." In terms of narrative, Ondaatje could have set this scene anywhere, or omitted it entirely; but in terms of its place in the emotional balance of the whole novel, nothing else would have been so powerful or so evocative. Images of this kind, based on imagination rather than logic, are the essence of Ondaatje's poetic sensibility.

What of the story? The back-cover blurb is true as far as it goes: "In the 1970s in Northern California a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is shattered by an incident of violence that sets fire to the rest of their lives. . . . As the narrative moves back and forth through time and place, we find each of these characters trying to gain some foothold in a present shadowed by the past." After the violent beginning (whose nature I shall not reveal), the story moves forward several decades, though with frequent flashbacks. Coop, private and principled and extremely likeable, has unexpectedly become a professional gambler. Claire is a legal aide in San Francisco; her path will eventually re-cross his, bringing about a sort of partial ending two-thirds of the way through the book. Anna has become an author under a different name, writing biographies (or biographical novels; it is never quite clear) about minor French literary figures. Currently, she is working on a poet called Lucien Segura, and staying in the house where he spent his last years; these scenes in a remote part of Southern France make a wonderful contrast to those in California and Nevada.

But just where you might expect Ondaatje to pull everything together, he drops Coop, Claire, and Anna almost entirely, and starts a new set of stories about Segura's younger years, his loves and marriage, his experiences in the First World War, and the gypsy family he befriends when he buries himself in his last retreat. The whole texture of the book changes. These are engaging vignettes, created in short chapters, poetical and imagistic rather than factual, and this reader was soon swept up in them as though by a new novel. Indeed, I found that I couldn't stop reading once this section had started, partly out of sheer affection for the characters and delight in the writing, but partly to discover how Ondaatje would finally tie the two parts of the book together. Somewhere along the line, I began to realize that he wouldn't -- except in the sense that Segura's story was essentially being told (or perhaps invented) by Anna, in much the same way that the story of the two lovers in Ian McEwan's  ATONEMENT  is extended in the writing of the younger sister Briony. So far from this being a single sweeping canvas, as the cover suggests, it is constructed as a diptych: two separate panels (Ondaatje himself uses this image, in a different context) that enter into a dialogue with each other rather than connecting directly.

DIVISADERO? There is a street of that name in San Francisco, where Anna apparently lived for a while, but the novel does not take place there. The sense of the word as "division" or "break" is obviously appropriate for this family parted by passion and scattered through space. But Anna points out that the word may also derive from the Spanish "divisar," to look at something from a distance. By the end of the book, Anna is indeed looking on from a distance, exploring her life in art, as Nietzsche once said, so as not to be destroyed by the truth. This is essentially what any great novelist does, and with it Ondaatje invites the reader into the heart of his craft. Yet he gives us an even greater gift; by avoiding literal connections between his two stories, but instead inspiring our imagination and trusting us to find our own parallels, he gets us not only to read his words as a poet, but to think and feel as poets in ourselves.
21 people found this helpful
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William S Jamison
4.0 out of 5 stars Divisions galore
Reviewed in the United States on 16 April 2014
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This book was our book group selection for the discussion on April 13, 2014. Not everyone enjoyed the book. Some were very disappointed in the organization of the book since it did not seem to have a normal follow up of the main characters but instead, essentially left you hanging. It also seemed to be several books not quite tightly tied together. Even the continuous trail of the characters was divided by events and the life afterwards seemed barely connected to the previous. But this is after all what the title is all about. It names not only a road that divides San Francisco from the Presidio but also a point where a person can see far off. There is also the interesting possibility that a reader can view the similarities and dissimilarities between the characters as marks of division as well, as if they reflect the difference decision points can make it the outcomes of a person's life. Some characters do similar things over and over again. Coop gets the same result for the same offence twice and rescued both times by the same person despite the odds of this happening. What many did find great about the book were lines that seemed especially beautiful and thought provoking. The language is skillfully done. The literary references when you caught them ran throughout. Note the color blue for example. So while some may not have enjoyed the book itself looking for more normal novel fare, the discussion about it was great and as usual we all learned more about it than any one reading of it could have achieved on its own. Book groups. A really great way to read.
5 people found this helpful
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Sam Sinclair
4.0 out of 5 stars Superb...if slightly curious read...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 October 2007
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A wonderful book from a masterly writer, however the structure of the book will frustrate those who prefer their novels a little more conventional.
The way Ondaatje leaves his characters `in the air` is odd....and the switch to the life of the writer from the main character Anna... now residing in his former house....while magnificently written is frustrating at times.
I found the oddest part of the work, was in the life of Coop who becomes a professional card player. This could have been written by a completely different author. Derivative, cliched....it could have been taken from a cheap paperback.
I can only conclude that this was indeed the author`s intention....his words when the other characters are involved are simply breathtaking.
3 people found this helpful
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