I (heart) Michael Ondaatje

Oddly, as I was reading this story, I actually thought, "Sounds like a character from Murakami's work." You know, since I read one single Murakami book, making me an expert.

Moving on from being totally pretentious.

I've had In the Skin of A Lion on my coffee table for at least two weeks now, waiting to be reviewed. Or whatever it is I do here, with the books.

Michael Ondaatje's writing is just so lyrical. Whimsical. The man is my new best friend -- if he, like, knew me. So I guess I mean to say we should really be friends. I'd be all, "Hey, Ondaatje, tell me a fairy tale!" And he'd say, "Trish, do you really need another fairy tale? Hasn't your collection of chick flicks on DVD fed you enough lies about unattainable romantic love?" And I'd whisper uncertainly, "No...."

Moving on.

"In books he had read, even those romances he swallowed during childhood, Patrick never believed that characters lived only on the page. They altered when the author's eye was somewhere else. Outside the plot there was a great darkness, but there would of course be daylight elsewhere on earth. Each character had his own time zone, his own lamp, otherwise they were just men from nowhere." p. 143

And,

"Official histories, news stories surround us daily, but the events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle.

"Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become." p. 146

I know these snippets tell you little about this book. I raced through the novel, sprinted through it in a single day at the airport (it was a long, long day, although I have nothing to complain about really).

The image that stayed with me, though, was that of a nun falling off a bridge, grabbed, then shedding her skin for another life. I don't want to ruin anything for you, but it's so, so good.

I fell a little bit in love with Patrick -- more so in his later, quieter days than his early eager ones. But there is this wistfulness in him, from childhood through fatherhood. And, at once, mourned him. I really have to re-read The English Patient at some point. (Thanks, S.)

In the meantime, however, I am finishing Happenstance, before starting a George Orwell book for book club. I am fascinated by the idea no two people can ever really know each other, can ever actually crawl into each other's minds and understand what's going on. And I can't get over the pent-up anger in Carol Shields's women. (Again, talking like an expert when this is only my second Shields novel. Sigh.)

I am also overwhelmed by the reality -- the absolute truth -- that a woman needs a room of her own. And that this was once a novel idea, an idea to hold your breath for or cross your fingers for or wish with your whole body that someone else would understand.

I've always been so curious about women my age who refuse to identify themselves as feminists. They shy away from seeming militant or scary. But I see that I, too, have just no idea.

thanks to an IMA

Dear Michael Ondaatje:

Where have you been all my life?

Besides, you know, everywhere?

I finished reading The English Patient last night, and my heart swelled on the last lines of the book.

I know. "Heart swelled." What a cliche. You would never write such a thing, Mr. Ondaatje, you Important Male Author you. You would write a sentence that was somehow upside down and sideways, perfect in its poetry, utterly clear in its purpose, absolutely not showy but completely powerful.

You would write dialogue that is at once shadowy and real. Something like this, perhaps:

"You've tied yourself to a corpse for some reason."
"He is a saint. I think. A despairing saint. Are there such things? Our desire is to protect them."
"He doesn't even care!"
"I can love him."
"A twenty-year-old who throws herself out of the world to love a ghost!" (p. 45)

You would also write a sentence as pure and simple as this: Madox died because of nations. (p. 138) And that would honestly not read as silly or even all that simple in the context of a book that is about everything from love to war to tenderness to harsh realism. A book about racism and nationalism and internationalism and lives that shouldn't be so territorial.

Thank you, Sir. Thank you for a book with an ending so symmetrical I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. For a book so good I can't wait to read another. And for fascinating studies in character, of the Girl Alone and the Boy Curious and the Man Erased and the Man Borderless.

T.

two of my favourite things

This essay, written by Margaret Atwood on the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables, is pretty long. And I have to admit entirely worth it because of the second-to-last and last graphs. I, too, always wondered whether Anne actually changed in the first book.... why be quieter? What does that mean? Marilla, on the other hand....

On other books, I'm reading The English Patient, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I've heard it is among a list of books readers are least likely to finish, but I honestly can't understand why. It's pages and pages of poetry, and layers of plot wrapped in characters. Why would anyone ever want to put it down?

And for those curious about the next book club selection, it is Into the Wild. Not, apparently, because of the movie. I haven't yet started it, but it appears to be written by an Important Male Author (or at least a Male Author), so picking it up by the first weekend of May will not lead to me cheating on my short-term resolution.