Michael Ondaatje gained world recognition in 1992 with his novel “The English Patient” which was awarded the Booker Prize and was subsequently made into a successful film. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan-born author is not a prolific writer, one more reason why the release of a novel constitutes a literary event. His latest novel “Divisadero,” published last year, has been well received by critics who praised the story and its original structure.
The multilayered narrative weaves a tale of passion and loss on the web of an unforgettable past. “We live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives... We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell,” writes Ondaatje.
The author admits that he doesn’t really begin a novel with an idea of what’s going to happen but he feels that his role as a writer is similar to that of an archaeologist: “It’s what the writer does with any character. On one level you’re moving forward, but in the other, you’re revealing the past”.
Ondaatje dislikes the linear structure. He has even described his novels as “cubist.”
“The structure happens as the story unravels, with each discovery, at each plateau, a sidebar or descant, whatever it is... Once I’ve discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity. Planning that sort of thing beforehand would bore the hell out of me. One of the things that happens in novels, it’s almost like a continual debate with yourself. That’s why you’re writing the book. It’s why you create characters: So you can argue with yourself,” explains Ondaatje.
It is almost impossible to find a continuous narrative in his books and “Divisadero” is no exception. One of the main characters, the American teenager, Anna, disappears at the beginning of the story when she runs away, in tragic circumstances, from her California home in the 1970s. She reappears later in the novel as a thirty-four year-old scholar of French literature living in southern France.
Ondaatje’s novels are characterized by a constant flow between past and present. This permanent play with chronology and memory, with fantasy and reality blurs the limits between time and space and often leaves the reader disorientated, frustrated and longing for more information. “Divisadero” is an open-ended novel. We are not supposed to understand what happens to the main protagonists — Anna, Claire and Coop — after the drama which changes their lives forever. Yet, we would love to know what takes place between Claire and Coop when they meet again a few decades later. And will Anna ever try to contact her sister Claire and Coop, her first love?
Ethan Rutherford justly remarks that: “One doesn’t come to Ondaatje for resolution. One comes for the language, the discreet imagined moments, the exact metaphors, the turn of phrase and for the thrill of watching a writer attempting, and for the most part, succeeding, in his desire, through juxtaposition, to make the world more than it is.”
When the writer was asked why he chose the title he explained, “It suggests division, and the concept of looking at something from afar... It is a book of separations and divisions, of two stories that link up.” The word “divisadero” itself comes from the Spanish word for “division” which also derives from the word “divisar,” meaning to “gaze at something from a distance.”
Ondaatje has been described as a poetic novelist so it is not surprising that “Divisadero” is imbued with poetry. A beautiful passage shows Rafael, the musician, cooking to the sound of Bach: “He listened, watching the blade slow its movements, now slicing the innards, then the mushrooms, a sleepwalking knife, his hand pouring a splash of... dry mustard into a pan, while he was in this spare thicket of music”.
Reading “Divisadero” is challenging. This haunting novel, an ode to memory, is at times impenetrable but nevertheless rewarding. Ondaatje is able to create unforgettable scenes, lyrical landscapes and poignant feelings that leave the reader with a sensual tingle which is literary pleasure at its best.