Michael Ondaatje: In The Skin Of A Lion

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In my effort to break up the current string of only American flags...

Lured by rumors of Michael Ondaatje’s heady prose and some popular as well as critical success, I had no qualms in grabbing his 1987 In The Skin of a Lion next out of the Nobel Prize candidate stack. There ARE other worthy Canadian candidates, Alice Munro and Margaret Attwood come to mind, but as a sucker for poetic-leaning narrative, I took the bait.
Prior to opening this, Michael Ondaatje’s second novel, I was aware that its sequel, the English Patientwon a Booker prize, and also that he is noted as an accomplished poet. One sentence bio: born in Sri Lanka, he moved first to England and then finally to Canada in1962 where he became a Canadian citizen….
Viscera:
Set in Ontario and primarily Toronto of the 20’s and 30’s the novels characters, (the ‘six stars and a moon’ referenced in the opening authorial aside) are immigrants who have roles to play out in the construction of the city. This aside to the reader is key to the conceit for the narrative’s style:

This is a story a young girl gathers in a car during the early hours of morning….she listens to the man as he picks up and brings together various corners of the story, attempting to carry it all in his arms. And he is tired, sometimes as elliptical as his concentration on the road….
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It gives Ondjaate’s narrator a license to freely work and shape his memories, to “suggest order to the chaos” and create a history out of the backwoods immigrant Patrick Lewis’s story. As a young boy, we learn early on that he is acutely aware of minutiae in his surroundings… Nah, too much plot summary for this blog… you can wiki here if you want it spoiled.

Impressive talent. I would need to read more Ondaatje...

Full review here.



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[john h]

Ondaatje is a very good writer but some of his stuff is kind of heavy going. You know things are never going to turn out well. For something lighter, try his memoir "Running in the family". Very enjoyable.

 

[Daniel del Real]

In my effort to break up the current string of only American flags...



Impressive talent. I would need to read more Ondaatje...

Full review here.



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Well done breaking the streak of American flags Randy, I should be doing that too, but the books I ordered from Amazon finally arrived and now I'm sticked reading in English. However, two of them are Canadian, so there's a hope there.

About Ondaatje, I've heard a lot of him, many praising him as great stylist and prodigious narrator, other disliking him by several reasons I don't fully understand. I've never read anything from him and I surely want to, however it has not been Ondaatje's time for me yet.
Your review sure sounds interesting, again those kind of novels with a complex structure (or is it that you make everything sound complex in your reviews with words like "extreme ontological awareness" ?)

Canada has a very good wave of writers nowadays: Atwood, Munro and Ondaatje himself as the sacred ones, and young talents like Stephen Marche and Steven Galloway that can deliver a lot in a near future.
Maybe it's not gonna be this year or the following, but in the next ten years Canada definetely will have a Nobel Laureate.

 

[promtbr]

Your review sure sounds interesting, again those kind of novels with a complex structure (or is it that you make everything sound complex in your reviews with words like "extreme ontological awareness" ?)

Always good to hear your input. In The Skin of a Lion is not a complicated read on the narrative level. Other than the few flash forwards and weaving the storyline of the the supporting characters, it is pretty straightforward. I should have made that clear in the review. What I found satisfying, is his bringing together themes, unifying the structure, in further stitching the characters into the historical sense of the story.... I would have swapped out 'sense of place in the world' for the two bit 'ontological' if I was'nt too lazy...

Of the Canadians, I must read Atwood and Munro before Nobel time at least. But Fuentes is up next.


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[Daniel del Real]

Always good to hear your input. In The Skin of a Lion is not a complicated read on the narrative level. Other than the few flash forwards and weaving the storyline of the the supporting characters, it is pretty straightforward. I should have made that clear in the review. What I found satisfying, is his bringing together themes, unifying the structure, in further stitching the characters into the historical sense of the story.... I would have swapped out 'place in their world' for the two bit 'ontological' if I was'nt too lazy...

Of the Canadians, I must read Atwood and Munro before Nobel time at least. But Fuentes is up next.



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I haven?t read Munro either. Just one Atwood and I did like it a lot.

And don't bother, you can skip Fuentes. Unfortunately they are not going to award him, so I keep no longer ilusions about him.
By the way, what book are you gonna read?

 

[shaunrandol]

A recently published essay on The Mantle actually examines four of Ondaatje's novels: Divisadero, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil's Ghost.

Enjoy...

The Art of Looking Back
In the contemporary literary imagination, few authors can claim to have the immediate emotive responses to their work as Canadian Michael Ondaatje. Influencing other contemporary Canadian poets-turned-writers such as Anne Simpson, Patrick Lane and Priscilla Uppal, Ondaatje is widely recognized for epic yet intimate storytelling, lyrical and poetic prose, and the ability to connect the geographies of the past and present. Mastering in dense, intimate narratives that interweave the reverberations of individual actions and stories amid the greater forces of communal history, his novels seek to answer questions that are as timeless as they are relevant in contemporary society: how can we move on from trauma without forgetting? How can each life and each story be sanctified, or be made whole once it has been smashed? What does it mean to be human, to love and to lose, and what can be gained out of loss?


While Ondaatje has published several novels, most notably In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, Anil?s Ghost and his most recent work Divisadero, his central ideas have remained consistent and have been deepened and amplified in each successive work. A true poet at heart, his novels find their genesis in vivid, startling images that bleed and bloom into full-length narratives. The images of a nun falling off a half-completed bridge in In the Skin of a Lion; the burnt convalescent Almasy, his image and identity literally erased by flames in The English Patient; a Buddhist statue painstakingly reconstructed in Anil?s Ghost; and sisters caught in a barn with a frightened horse amid a violent thunderstorm in Divisadero are some of the central images associated with Ondaatje?s works. These visualizations are the cornerstone for Ondaatje?s trenchant, powerful explorations of the contradictions and duality of the human condition. Where earlier works such as The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and Coming Through Slaughter (1976) were dark, often disturbing retellings of the downward spiral of real historical lives, riveting and raw yet difficult to digest, the fictive work containing the origin of his main arguments is often regarded as In the Skin of a Lion.

Continue reading on The Mantle

 

[Daniel del Real]

Canada has a very good wave of writers nowadays: Atwood, Munro and Ondaatje himself as the sacred ones, and young talents like Stephen Marche and Steven Galloway that can deliver a lot in a near future.
Maybe it's not gonna be this year or the following, but in the next ten years Canada definetely will have a Nobel Laureate.

I just want to highlight my foresight skills . Also my incapacity of reading authors I said I would soon; ten years later I haven't read Ondaatje. Probably I'll do it soon as I'm probably going to a lecture by him in early September. Reluctant to read The English Patient though.

 

[Stevie B]

I just want to highlight my foresight skills . Also my incapacity of reading authors I said I would soon; ten years later I haven't read Ondaatje. Probably I'll do it soon as I'm probably going to a lecture by him in early September. Reluctant to read The English Patient though.

I preferred The English Patient to In the Skin of a Lion, but didn’t really love either one. Perhaps Coming through the Slaughter might be interesting?

 

[Daniel del Real]

I think I'll take something short and simple, a memoir: Running in the Family. However, based on the brief searching I made to pick a title he seems to be a writer that changes with every novel, at least settings and topics. That could be a plus.

 

[Ben Jackson]

I haven't read any novels of Ondaatje except The English Patient, which I enjoy very much. Do you guys think In The Skin of a Lion is worthy?

 

[Leseratte]

I remember loving In the Skin of a Lion, Ben. I didn´t read The English Patient though. I only watched the movie.

 

[OverTheMountains]

I haven't read any novels of Ondaatje except The English Patient, which I enjoy very much. Do you guys think In The Skin of a Lion is worthy?

I read In The Skin of a Lion earlier this year after a very good friend, whose judgement I trust deeply, recommended it. I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it because my preconceptions of his writing were that he was far more romantic than I tend to enjoy. But they did not lead me astray.

It might end up being the best book I've read to completion this year; but that mantle largely depends on whether I finish Moby Dick this month. Regardless, it will certainly land in the top 3. I would highly, highly recommend it.

 

[Ben Jackson]

I read In The Skin of a Lion earlier this year after a very good friend, whose judgement I trust deeply, recommended it. I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it because my preconceptions of his writing were that he was far more romantic than I tend to enjoy. But they did not lead me astray.

It might end up being the best book I've read to completion this year; but that mantle largely depends on whether I finish Moby Dick this month. Regardless, it will certainly land in the top 3. I would highly, highly recommend it.

I will try and look for In the Skin soon. As for Moby-Dick, it's an amazing fictional accomplishment. Surely one of the finest novels I've read. A classic anyday.