this is a very well written children's book for adults. loved it.

Finally: a bedtime story for adults! Not to mention a genre-bending combination of poetry and narrative that fascinates and inspires me as a poet. (And, obviously, as a human being.)

Opaque but mildly lovely.

Beautiful illustrations match with Ondaatje's words to make spooky lovely myth. I read this when I was pregnant with my son and nearly broke down crying when the king touches his pregnant wife.

beautiful, my mom just gave this to me as a present.

"and then the past is erased".....we are told on the first page of "THE STORY".

Children are given forty days of dreams of previous lives and then "the past is erased".

This is a beautifully written and illustrated little book that teases out questions and follows with elegiac whispers of the memories, the histories that were present before the maps were buried.

The poem takes us to a place we have already been trained to enter and conquer, only any projection past that point is unknown..... thus at the end we are left to reflect and wonder.....and hope for our future.

Michael Ondaatje magically takes the reader into his hands and transports him gently through his poem in a dreamlike haze.

This lovely little book would make a wonderful gift and knowing that all royalties go directly to a fundraising project for World Literacy of Canada is an added bonus!

The Story is a poem by Michael Ondaatje with drawings by David Bolduc. According to the artist's description, Bolduc "is a well-known Canadian painter who has been instrumental in defining contemporary painting". Admittedly, I found his drawings to be hit and miss...

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The inclusion of Ondaatje's poem in typset and red handwriting underneath the typeset may be interesting for diehard fans of Ondaatje, but I found it distracting. That's not to suggest that I'm not a fan of Ondaatje (perhaps not diehard).

There are many memorable passages, and the overall story is compelling. The presentation is impressive (however mixed I may feel about the handwriting and drawings), but I think "The Story" would have benefited from being packaged with other poems by Ondaatje (perhaps likewise illustrated by Bolduc).

I clearly missed the point of this book. And I was not a fan of the illustrations.

A poem / story about remembering, legacy, life, war, and death. It's a modern-day fairytale, Ondaatje style.

It's accompanied by drawings by David Bolduc, and is a fantastic storybook for adults.

A deceptively quick read, this book should be read many times to be appreciated.

Brilliant.

Excellent. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up from a poetry display at the library, but I was really pleasantly surprised by this little book.
A beautiful poem, accompanied by amazing watercolor pictures. Having the poem written in the author's handwriting really added to the whole mysteriously elegant feel of the poem.

4 STARS

"Michael Ondaatje's poems have been celebrated by readers and writers alike for containing some of the most memorable and moving verse written in the past half-century. The Story combines Ondaatje's sensual writing with watercolor illustrations by celebrated painter David Bolduc, making a unique item. Left-hand pages contain Bolduc's art while right-hand pages contain Ondaatje's poem — both typeset and in the author's own handwriting. This elegant housing is a fitting accompaniment to Ondaatje's elegaic poem, which follows his larger themes — love, memory, family, exile — even as it unfolds into "our dismantled childhoods," and offers readers the opportunity to extend its narrative into their own lives" (From Amazon)

As always I enjoyed this collection of Ondaatje's poems.