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Nicholas Temelcoff could catch me any day.
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In the Skin of a Lion
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Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient. 256 pp.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1987
This edition
- Format
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256 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 14, 1997 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- ISBN
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9780679772668
- ASIN
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0679772669
- Language
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English
About the author
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Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil and Burgher descent. Ondaatje emigrated to Canada in 1962, where he pursued his education, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from Queen's University.
Ondaatje's literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General's Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil's Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General's Award. Ondaatje's novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje's work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje's personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje's enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.
Ondaatje's literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General's Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil's Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General's Award. Ondaatje's novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje's work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje's personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje's enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.
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This book is a journey through a series of murky moods; it bristles with suffering and suppressed rage. It has the most beautiful water imagery I have ever read, but I can't find any examples flipping back through it now. Instead, I find this:
But almost any paragraph in this book could be a pull-quote. The entire novel cycles by like a single case of black and white slides, projected onto a mostly clean, white wall in a gloomy room full of smoke and uncomfortable chairs. Each slide reveals a fragment of the complicated, painful, and beautiful relationships between a series of characters. The slides tell many stories, but without resolution. No destination, only through, through, and through.
There was a wall in him no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he had carried around because he could not shed it. His motive for hiding it had probably extinguished itself years earlier. . . . Patrick and his small unimportant stone. It had entered him at the wrong time in his life. Then it had been a flint of terror. He could have easily turned aside at the age of seven or twenty, and just spat it out and kept on walking, and forgotten it by the next street corner.
So we are built.
But almost any paragraph in this book could be a pull-quote. The entire novel cycles by like a single case of black and white slides, projected onto a mostly clean, white wall in a gloomy room full of smoke and uncomfortable chairs. Each slide reveals a fragment of the complicated, painful, and beautiful relationships between a series of characters. The slides tell many stories, but without resolution. No destination, only through, through, and through.
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This novel is the reason novels need to be written. Ondaatje is always a stunning writer, his prose brushing up against poetry in the very best of ways, but In the Skin of a Lion rivals The English Patient with its imagery. I re-read this novel about once a year, and every time the first cracking of the spine is an almost spiritual experience.
Ondaatje is a rare writer of historical fiction in that his background knowledge is clearly immense, but he doesn't feel the need to lay it all out in the open. There is great attention to detail here, especially when it comes to the construction of bridges and tunnels, but it is beautifully written and wildly realistic. For a novel so deeply rooted in fact, this is a fantastical endeavour. As with The English Patient, Ondaatje flings improbable combinations of people in improbable circumstances into a world that is so richly researched, it feels surreal.
It's not just beautiful imagery and historical accuracy. There are surprises in his writing; two years can pass in a paragraph, a man can go from perfect peace to being literally set on fire, a nun can be saved from certain death, and during the space of hours, she can cut her habit with a pair of shears and leave behind the life she'd known. This is a political novel that encompasses the frenetic construction of Toronto, the harsh winters and glorious summers of the Ontario countryside, the universal struggles of immigrants in a new world; above all it is 200 pages of absolutely sublime writing that somehow captures the pace and the thrill of pivotal moments both in history and in our lives.
This is a novel that needs to be sunk into, slowly and with patience. It is possibly one of the most rewarding books I've ever read.
Ondaatje is a rare writer of historical fiction in that his background knowledge is clearly immense, but he doesn't feel the need to lay it all out in the open. There is great attention to detail here, especially when it comes to the construction of bridges and tunnels, but it is beautifully written and wildly realistic. For a novel so deeply rooted in fact, this is a fantastical endeavour. As with The English Patient, Ondaatje flings improbable combinations of people in improbable circumstances into a world that is so richly researched, it feels surreal.
It's not just beautiful imagery and historical accuracy. There are surprises in his writing; two years can pass in a paragraph, a man can go from perfect peace to being literally set on fire, a nun can be saved from certain death, and during the space of hours, she can cut her habit with a pair of shears and leave behind the life she'd known. This is a political novel that encompasses the frenetic construction of Toronto, the harsh winters and glorious summers of the Ontario countryside, the universal struggles of immigrants in a new world; above all it is 200 pages of absolutely sublime writing that somehow captures the pace and the thrill of pivotal moments both in history and in our lives.
This is a novel that needs to be sunk into, slowly and with patience. It is possibly one of the most rewarding books I've ever read.
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This novel centers on Patrick Lewis, a young man from rural Canada who arrives in Toronto in the early 1920's trying to make a place for himself in the world. He finds work initially as a "searcher" (sort of an entry-level private detective) looking for a reclusive millionaire named Ambrose Small. He ends up finding a woman who was (is?) romantically involved with Small named Clara Dickens, and his life takes the first of a series of turns from there.
This book should not work... the plot hops back and forth in time which makes things a bit difficult to follow. Descriptions of events often have a surreal, poetic quality that that might drive some readers away. But I was absolutely mesmerized by the gorgeous prose, and the unique structure of the story kept me engaged throughout. Loved it.
This book should not work... the plot hops back and forth in time which makes things a bit difficult to follow. Descriptions of events often have a surreal, poetic quality that that might drive some readers away. But I was absolutely mesmerized by the gorgeous prose, and the unique structure of the story kept me engaged throughout. Loved it.
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[3.5 stars]
i will admit that i had no idea what was going on in the beginning of the book but ondaatje was able to turn that confusion into an understanding of the immigrant experience in the 1920s and 1930s. i’ve never read a book that had its setting in toronto before so it was nice to see how many places i recognized.
i will admit that i had no idea what was going on in the beginning of the book but ondaatje was able to turn that confusion into an understanding of the immigrant experience in the 1920s and 1930s. i’ve never read a book that had its setting in toronto before so it was nice to see how many places i recognized.
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It was quite a while since I had read something by Ondaatje. I read "The English Patient" twice, a few years ago. The first time I was enthralled. But my second reading disappointed me. With "In the Skin of a Lion" I retraced this emotional trajectory in the space of reading a single book.
I know Ondaatje doesn't want us to look for a polished, coherent story in his books. In "Skin" he warns the reader in a variety of ways for the inevitable disorder and multiplicity of his narrative universe. There's a motto (by John Berger) that prefaces the book: "Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one." Then Ondaatje frames the whole novel as a story that is being told by a man to a girl, during a four hour nightly drive in a car: "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, at time overexcited ..." And then halfway through the book, the author admonishes us again: "Trust me, this will take time, but there is order here, very faint, very human". And despite these warnings and caveats, after a while a feeling of dissatisfaction sets in. The problem is not really the fact that an Ondaatje novel is more a collection of vignettes than a clockwork literary edifice. The problem is that this fragmentation erodes his characters' psychology. In "The English Patient" all of the protagonists are shadowy, ephemeral and solipsistic figures, unable to reach beyond their own world. In this book they fare only slightly better. With Patrick Lewis, Ondaatje has arguably drawn an interesting character. Although Lewis is only marginally less solitary and enigmatic than the "Patient's" protagonist, something of the animal-like but appealing naiveté of this personality really shines through. On the other hand, Lewis is not a man of ideas nor really of purposeful action and his development into a wavering anarchist is sketchy and rather implausible. Also the female characters in "Skin" - Clara, Alice, Hana - remain two dimensional, more carriers of an idea or an ethos than real human beings.
Ondaatje's mastery of prose is ultimately what one keeps involved. His language is suggestive and brilliantly refined (although sometimes it spills over into the ridiculous: how on earth is the "flight of a post-coital bat" supposed to look like?). Apparently he started out writing poems and I think this, rather than novels, is his real trade. He spins his narrative out of hypnotic images, some of which come back in various guises across different novels. For example, the image of a person hanging from a rope in a deep void is iconic image in the "English Patient" and it plays an important role in "Skin" too. Likewise, I thought of Ondaatje's description of a deserted Naples in the former book when reading the final scenes that play out in the monumental, cavernous Toronto waterworks in "Skin of a Lion".
So it's mixed feelings again after finishing this book. I'd give it 3,5 stars. The next book by Ondaatje I pick up will be one of his early collections of poems.
I know Ondaatje doesn't want us to look for a polished, coherent story in his books. In "Skin" he warns the reader in a variety of ways for the inevitable disorder and multiplicity of his narrative universe. There's a motto (by John Berger) that prefaces the book: "Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one." Then Ondaatje frames the whole novel as a story that is being told by a man to a girl, during a four hour nightly drive in a car: "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, at time overexcited ..." And then halfway through the book, the author admonishes us again: "Trust me, this will take time, but there is order here, very faint, very human". And despite these warnings and caveats, after a while a feeling of dissatisfaction sets in. The problem is not really the fact that an Ondaatje novel is more a collection of vignettes than a clockwork literary edifice. The problem is that this fragmentation erodes his characters' psychology. In "The English Patient" all of the protagonists are shadowy, ephemeral and solipsistic figures, unable to reach beyond their own world. In this book they fare only slightly better. With Patrick Lewis, Ondaatje has arguably drawn an interesting character. Although Lewis is only marginally less solitary and enigmatic than the "Patient's" protagonist, something of the animal-like but appealing naiveté of this personality really shines through. On the other hand, Lewis is not a man of ideas nor really of purposeful action and his development into a wavering anarchist is sketchy and rather implausible. Also the female characters in "Skin" - Clara, Alice, Hana - remain two dimensional, more carriers of an idea or an ethos than real human beings.
Ondaatje's mastery of prose is ultimately what one keeps involved. His language is suggestive and brilliantly refined (although sometimes it spills over into the ridiculous: how on earth is the "flight of a post-coital bat" supposed to look like?). Apparently he started out writing poems and I think this, rather than novels, is his real trade. He spins his narrative out of hypnotic images, some of which come back in various guises across different novels. For example, the image of a person hanging from a rope in a deep void is iconic image in the "English Patient" and it plays an important role in "Skin" too. Likewise, I thought of Ondaatje's description of a deserted Naples in the former book when reading the final scenes that play out in the monumental, cavernous Toronto waterworks in "Skin of a Lion".
So it's mixed feelings again after finishing this book. I'd give it 3,5 stars. The next book by Ondaatje I pick up will be one of his early collections of poems.
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First things first: I do not think Michael Ondaatje gets enough credit. I know that he wrote "The English Patient," which became an epic romantic film with Ralph Fiennes. But not only is "The English Patient" a wonderful book, but ALL of his books are beautiful. "In the Skin of a Lion" may be my favorite.
I have a great love affair with Ondaatje's prose, which gently lilts and probes and carefully illuminates the most telling truths about his characters. There are very few other writers whose work I find so intuitive and organic. He makes even the most absurd things beautiful (e.g. pouring milk all over someone's arm, mouth-to-mouth semen exchange).
This is the novel that made me fall in love with Ondaatje's writing. I love the sense of awe and mystery, of being on the outside, of making discoveries. Epic romantic films with Ralph Fiennes aside, Ondaatje's writing is top notch, and it doesn't get better than this one.
I have a great love affair with Ondaatje's prose, which gently lilts and probes and carefully illuminates the most telling truths about his characters. There are very few other writers whose work I find so intuitive and organic. He makes even the most absurd things beautiful (e.g. pouring milk all over someone's arm, mouth-to-mouth semen exchange).
This is the novel that made me fall in love with Ondaatje's writing. I love the sense of awe and mystery, of being on the outside, of making discoveries. Epic romantic films with Ralph Fiennes aside, Ondaatje's writing is top notch, and it doesn't get better than this one.
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I first read this book as a prescribed reading in high school and I didn't get it. A number of factors contributed- it was a prescribed reading and reading things you're forced to read is difficult. The book itself is complex, jumping between time, moments, and dialogue and is set in a time and place unfamiliar to my teenage self. My teacher did little to inspire the class- probably because he'd taught content from this book for years and years and lacked the inspiration himself.
Reading this book 10 years later has been a widely different experience. It contains everything I want in a book- inspiration and perspective, Making me consider 1900's living, what it would be like if I became a thief, how simple, yet difficult labouring work is and how beautiful and unpredictable love and life can be.
The overall theme of the novel is to describe the untold stories of migrants in North America, but there are so many more themes (probably why it was a prescribed text at my school). One theme I hope you keep an eye out for while reading is polyamory. For a story set in the 30s and written in the 80s, this is very brave and I think is a testament to Ondaatje's subtle and post-modern style of writing, allowing the reader to find what they want to find.
I plan on reading this book again in the next year and cannot wait to see what else I discover.
Reading this book 10 years later has been a widely different experience. It contains everything I want in a book- inspiration and perspective, Making me consider 1900's living, what it would be like if I became a thief, how simple, yet difficult labouring work is and how beautiful and unpredictable love and life can be.
The overall theme of the novel is to describe the untold stories of migrants in North America, but there are so many more themes (probably why it was a prescribed text at my school). One theme I hope you keep an eye out for while reading is polyamory. For a story set in the 30s and written in the 80s, this is very brave and I think is a testament to Ondaatje's subtle and post-modern style of writing, allowing the reader to find what they want to find.
I plan on reading this book again in the next year and cannot wait to see what else I discover.
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