Divisadero (Vintage International) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 7180
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307279324
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307279323
ASIN: 0307279324
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
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Amazon.com
From the celebrated author of The English Patient, comes another breathtaking, unforgettable story, this time about a family torn apart by an act of violence. Divisadero is a rich and rewarding read, one that Jhumpa Lahiri, in her guest review for Amazon.com (see below), calls "Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Jhumpa Lahiri
 Jhumpa Lahiri was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award for her mesmerizing debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her poignant and powerful debut novel, The Namesake was adapted by screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and released in theaters in 2007.
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. The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins, interchangeable, inseparable. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls' lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But Divisadero is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book and giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. But the stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twinning, Ondaatje's method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in rereading this beautiful book--which I wanted to do as soon as I finished it--that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author's genius is here: the searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life's most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence--subjects that have shaped Ondaatje's previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to Divisadero, an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. --Jhumpa Lahiri
Product Description
From the celebrated author of The English Patient and Anil's Ghost comes a remarkable, intimate novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.
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. Divisadero takes us from San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada's casinos and eventually to the landscape of southern France. As the narrative moves back and forth through time and place, we find each of the characters trying to find some foothold in a present shadowed by the past.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...
 less than I expected August 29, 2008
I was enthused by the first segment of what I thought would be a full novel with a single plot. To my disappointment, the author created three short novels with a barely visible connection among the parts. I thought there was ample room for an expansion of the life and times of Cooper, a principal character. But perhaps I am prejudiced by never having had enough to read about California, casino gambling and the rough, tough times going all the way from Gold Rush days up to the present Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and all the fascinations surrounding those exciting places. Overall, Divisadero was a moderate disappointment. I was struck, however by the author's occasional but punchy ant-war comments.
 Divisadero - A Must Read August 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I picked this book because I like the English Patient so much, but after reading it, I believe it was a far superior writing style than I have read in many a year. He is captivating in his word structure and imagery.I am recommending it to all as a must read! A classic!
A bit of a disappointment August 7, 2008
Ondaatje's "Divisadero" is a poetic work, but I find the story to be lacking substance and force. While spinning the tales of several families from different eras, and with hintings of supposedly meaningful comparisons between them, the connection seems weak. There are three parts to this novel:
Part I: Anna, Claire, and Coop;
Part II: The Family in the Cart;
Part III; The House in Demu.
In my opinion the three parts are better read separately than as a coherent whole, because the only common thread is the character named Lucien Segura. Sometimes Ondaatje's writing in "Divisadero" is suggestive and vague, as in the final passage in the novel that describes a disastrous boating event, which can be frustrating because of the uncertainty. While serving as a pleasurable read, "Divisadero" fails to be enlightening. The best parts of the novel is about the romance of lovers. Not recommended for serious reading.
"Everything is collage" July 21, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
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]
Master of his Craft July 10, 2008
Michael Ondaatje is an excellent writer and story teller, and this book displays all of his skills. The use of common elements and themes throughout this book, which is really about five short stories knitted together with the frailest of threads. I suppose there are lessons of life, about priorities and gaps that are never closed or closed too late in our lives, often with severe results. The book moves along quickly and keeping the characters straight can be a chore, but if one takes the time they will be rewarded, this is a gem.
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