Reread Early March 2023. Prior read July 2006

In the Skin of a Lion is a lyrical historical-fiction novel writen by Michael Ondaatje. It’s set in the 1920’s and 30’s in Canada. I found beauty often in the way he writes and the rhythms of his dialogues and sentences. And all the little details that gave life and depth to the story.

The ways our main character Patrick Lewis learns how to be in the world and develops his craft is by watching his father. There is beauty in their working together. His father teachers not in words but by offering his son experiences. They work in the quiet of the world; In touch with it.

In the beginning of the book Michael Ondaatje creates a stunning sense of place in the once wildness of Canada. Patrick’s first thing each winter morning was to
go to the kitchen window to watch a group of men dressed in the same dark clothes, with axes and lunches attached to their belts go off to work. He wonders each day where they are from and what work they do. This is the start of of documenting the growing immigrant community in Canada and Toronto. He brought alive cultures, different voices and singing and joy together at gatherings.

In the 1920 and 30’s Toronto is building a bridge under and over the lake and when that’s done a waterworks is started. Cheap labor is needed. Immigrants want to work to feed themselves and their families. They are exploited. There are no labor unions yet. Many people die from the work. Haves and have nots. And many of their names unknown. Long days in wretched weather at times. And some getting wet and cold having to entertain the water or work in mud. Patrick Lewis is a dynamite pro he gets paid a dollar a day. Extra sometimes for more set ups. He gets paid more then most people because of his craft. He cares about these people -

One day building the bridge a nun is on it. And she is blown away. It’s a wonderfully written scene. Most of the workers and those who heard the storybdon’t know if she lived or died.
There are other unusual characters in the book. He writes them all differently. The management of the projects do not see the workers or know their names. Michael Ondaaje in small little ways give them a sense of place and life.

Patrick Lewis is rather quiet working. He has 2 love relationships at different times.. Both women were best friends. And very different. His latter love was the mom of a young girl named Hannah. She is a terrific kid. Her mom is an artist -
an actor and dancer. When the book closes Hannah is 16. You might remember her if you read or saw The English Patient movie. She was the nurse who said: “Why is it that everyone I love dies.” We learn a little more about her life and why she said that. Patrick is terrific with her and she him. They are family. He came alive in their company. Giggles and laughter and love.

We have one other character you might remember too. And that is the Caravaggio - the Thief in the English Patient who lost his thumbs. He and Patrick meet in prison.

I am so glad I read this again. I really enjoyed it. I admire Michael Ondaatje story telling and use of language. That was really rich in this his second novel. I have to confess I listened to it on audible. The reader was excellent - he added a lot to the book. It was a very smooth read. However it seemed to be abridged. I didn’t check which I usually do. It seemed different then when I read it the first time in June 2006. Smoother.

Many times I’ve been asked whether I think I am embarking on a journey that will lead me to a useless degree. An unusable bachelors. Whether I know that there are diplomas that can give me diamonds instead. And for the longest time I had no answer to give but to say that: books are all I have left. But now I know. If someone were to ask again (probably with the intention of feeling better about their own future, why I study the humanities) my answer would simply be: because I am young. I am young and haven’t been acquainted with life yet. I study literature because each day it takes up the task of holding me in the palm of its hands to teach me. About death, the bone-deep chill only found in prison basements, love, the unspeakably domestic act of peeling clementines for someone, birth, rebirth, and betrayal. I catalogue all these teachings to protect my lungs, guard my heart, and harden my ribs. It is not, like some would say, an endless preparation to discuss hypotheticals and theory. It is practical knowledge. It betters the world. It betters the individual. It trains one. The ways to hold your love, when to hold your tongue. Unfortunately for me, it means that my studies will appear so much more the emotional task to me now. And Ondaatje’s book made me realize that. I want to eat this book; chew it’s words and hold them under my tongue. I’m losing my mind.

The perspective this novel takes on was not one that I would have normally reached for. I suppose this is the only good thing to come out of my Canadian Literature class so far. The city of Toronto has by no means a secret history. But the way that Ondaatje’s tells it, feels like being welcomed into his living room to hear a humble family history.

The novel lets us see the birth of Toronto through the eyes of the immigrant construction workers that built it. It depicts the bloody history behind the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct (that you use every day when the Subway passes from Braodview and Castle Frank Station) as well as the R.C. Harris Water Plant Treatment Centre that sits on Queen St. East. It sheds light on the exploitation of immigrants, the godly powers of city officials, and how expensive civilian unrest can be. Although the lives of the workers have been fictionalized, a number of events in the novel are historically accurate. A nun did fall from the Viaduct before its completion, multi-theatre owner, Ambrose Small, did disappear, and the murder of two labour union organizers at the time was an unfortunate reality. The plot is infused with desire, parties, and lust for life. It features first-time robbers and part-time assassins. The workers lead colourful lives. And… well, they’re human. That’s kind of the point, right?

The cast is just as interesting. We have:
- Patrick Lewis: narrator and son of a dynamiter
- R.C. Harris: Commissioner of Public Works
- Ambrose Small: owner of many theatres in Ontario
- Theresa Kormann: prohibitionist, actress, and Small’s wife
- Clara Dickens: Small’s mistress
- Alice Gull: actress and Dickens’ best friend
- Hana Gull: Alice’s daughter
- Caravaggio: a worker
- Giannetta: factory worker and Caravaggio’s wife
- Nicholas Temelcoff: worker
And many more.

To talk about this book would mean to never stop. It’s a puzzling thing that had my lecture of 200 trying to piece it together and failing.

It is work. Rearranging the timeline into the correct order is your homework for the duration of your stay with the text. It is a frustrating endeavour until you remember that the story is told from the perspective of a man driving late into the night, where time isn’t linear and memories swim away. Paired with the unspeakably lyrical prose, it makes the reading experience so incredibly precious. It is a raw child. A bloated stomach on a summer afternoon. Frankly speaking, I did lose the plot half-way through to lap up all scenes between our main protagonists, Patrick Lewis, Alice Gull, and Clara Dickens. And I don’t think you can blame me when the descriptions look like this:

“The water in the saucepan was boiling and they did not move. They stood together feeling each other’s spines, each other’s hair at the back of the neck. Relax, she said, and he wanted to collapse against her, be carried by her into foreign countries, into the ocean, into bed, anywhere. He has been alone too long.” (88)

“He came to believe she had the powers of a goddess who could condemn or bless. She would be able to transform the one she touched, the one she gripped at the wrist with her tough hand, the muscles stiffening up toward the blue-black of the half-revealed creature that pivoted on the bone of her shoulder. His eyes wanted to glimpse nothing else.” (112)

“What remained in the dyers’ skin was the odour that no woman in bed would ever lean towards. Alice lay beside Patrick’s exhausted body, her tongue on his neck, recognizing the taste of him, knowing the dyers’ wives would never taste or smell their husbands again in such a way; even if they removed all pigment and course salt crystal, the men would smell still of the angel they wrestled with in the well, in the pit. Incarnadine.” (132)

“She steps forward to hold him. His cheek on the moist skin under her arm, at the rib, about where they pierced Jesus he thinks. He suddenly falls to his knees. He holds her dress at the thighs as she slips down, slips through the dress so there is a bunched sequin sheath in his hands. The music ceases. A serious pause. They jerk with the swell of waves and he holds her hair from the back.” (226) - though this sounds more romantic out of context…you get the point.

Oh, and… page 205 devoured me.

I could share more of them, but I’d rather keep them my secret.

There are about a million more thoughts zipping through my mind after flipping the last page; none of them are good enough for an essay.
1. Caravaggio (not the painter) is always shrouded in darkness, only experiencing intense moments of subjugation in contrast. He is muse and painter. His effect was imprinted on the rest of the cast, giving them all one overexposed focal point as they are about to advance the plot.
2. Water. Water is everywhere. Revolutions ebb and flow in its tides. People die in waters, committed crimes with its help, escaped prisons by painting themselves a fresh hue of blue. Water is power. Perhaps even a character in and of itself. Cutting off its supply “brings a city to its knees.” (214). Ask the Romans. They would know.
3. An entire chapter gave off the smell of Gaston Leroux. I could swear I was reading the Phantom of the Opera for two dozen pages. But this isn’t Ulysses and it is not authored by James Joyce, so I’m not quite sure what I read… but I could taste a shift in style.
4. Ondaatje casually mentioned that T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral opened in England at that time. It caused me to crack open my annotated copy for half an hour in search for clues.
5. Diogenes was quoted
6. Toasts were dedicated to H.G. Wells
7. Patrick Lewis asking for the commissioner of public works to turn. off. the. light. right as he is about to kill him?? Othello. Final answer. And I do not care how dodgy the connection is.
8. Not to mention the title itself comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

For some, the randomness of the above might be off-putting. But to me it meant that I was never bored, always entertained. Genres collide. It is expertly done.

Needless to say, I am still digesting. This was one last feast before hibernation. The tangy prose will stick to my insides for the rest of winter. And I don’t know what it will do to me.

This 'humble epic' about Canada's working class in the early twentieth century is a memento to their sacrifices and to the injustice of their condition, a book made so much better by its lack of political extremism and by its dry, solemn prose; and it is also a wonderful and heartbreaking love novel.

The prose was fluid and poetic. The narrative was non-linear, but ultimately disappointing, disjointed, and dispasionate. The characters were poorly developed, cool, distant, and obscure; and, thus, too, I found their relationships undeveloped and somewhat random. Who was coupling with whom? And why?

Ultimately, the prose was sizzle without steak, a beautiful box without jewels, a floral preamble without body.

i don’t even know or understand what i just read.

Not for me.

If I'd known Ondaatje had a Booker Prize book (The English Patient) to his name, I probably would have considered myself warned; I bounce off Bookers like . . . like . . . what's something that bounces? Like jell-o bounces off a duck's back. I used to think I wasn't clever enough for Booker winners, and now I just think that Bookers tend to prioritize recursive, thematic novels without a lot of aggressive external structure, and I, a straightforward creature, love an aggressive external structure.

Use this information as you will.

*note: I tackled this book as part of my 2023 reading challenge to read books from this crowd-sourced list of recommended standalone novels published between 1985-2007: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Please know that I am a brittle and crotchety reader, so please don't take my opinions on these novels as universal.

Can't say enough about this author. Was an interesting read especially as he included some historical figures in it, making me go read up on them.

On to the next work!

A glorious, powerful, mesmerising book. The writing is exquisite at a sentence level, and Ondaatje somehow writes both a rich history of working class Toronto and an almost-biblical tale of fate, love and revenge.

A book full of sights and more, signifying much, including, and in a big way, one of my favorite themes -- that of the 'little' people, the ones 'behind the scenes' of history, the ones we'll never know.

After reading this book, I feel like I've been to Ontario and in particular Toronto during the early-20th century. Toronto is a teeming, vibrant multicultural community, so much so that the main character from backwoods Ontario feels like the outsider. Though to be completely accurate, he probably would've felt like an outsider no matter where he ended up, such was his upbringing and outlook.

Be patient with this book if the beginning seems a bit slow or meandering. You will be hugely rewarded. As one of the quotes I've marked from this says: The first sentence of every novel should be: "Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human." Meander if you want to get to town.

And as I neared the end and realized where we were headed, I also realized I'd forgotten where we started, because in between -- how we get from the beginning to the end -- is a dazzling feast, and feat.

There is a scene, in the very beginning of this book, during which Patrick Lewis, primary voice among the the half-dozen or so protagonists, watches Scandinavian men skate home over a frozen river on a dark winter's night in Northern Ontario, carrying handfuls of burning cattails over their heads. Ondaatje, who is the rare poet capable of writing great fiction, describes the scene thusly:

"It was not just the pleasure of skating. They could have done that during the day. This was against the night. The hard ice was so certain, they could leap into the air and crash down and it would hold them. their lanterns replaces with new rushes which let them go further past boundaries, speed! romance! one man waltzing with his fire. . . ."


And thus it begins. Dancing with the elements. A wind catching the skirts of a young nun and sending her spinning out into the air and into the arms of a daredevil bridge builder. Great explosions underwater and on land. Escape through water and betrayal by it. So much of this book exists on the perilous edge between something fear and whimsy. I've certainly never found any other book in which the acts of destruction felt so balletic.

Nuns,actresses, missing millionaires, orphan girls, burglars, radicals, immigrants and great marvels of engineering. For a slim book that often reads like poetry, there's an awful lot going on here. You hardly know where to look. And it is absolutely exquisite.

Wow, just so amazing. So efficiently and deftly written, reminded me of helen dewitt’s last samurai, in terms of the frenetic liveliness. Makes me want to read more ondaatje! Exquisite and scrumptiouly written; a witer’s novel!

In the Skin of a Lion is Michael Ondaatje’s second novel and the predecessor to The English Patient which won the Booker Prize and was made into a stunning film starring Ralph Fiennes. It’s an intriguing exposé of the immigrant dispossessed who built the city’s infrastructure in the 1920s. As the city is transformed by their labour so too must Ondaatje’s characters transform themselves and adapt to their new lives but they do this in unxpected ways. The book features disconnected narratives which intersect in fleeting ways, as if to mirror the way immigrants flit in and out of mainstream society without being able to make real connections. More than once characters conceal themselves with ‘new skins’. Time shifts, the narrative swirls and the reader has to work at making sense of it.

I admit that I struggled with the novel a bit, but I think it’s worth the effort. (The climax is stunning. ) When you read The Epic of Gilgamesh, from which the title derives, there are gaps, because not all of the epic has survived the ravages of time. Some translations attempt to infer the missing bits; others leave it blank. I prefer this, because I am comfortable with ’not knowing’. I accept that ancient texts are necessarily incomplete and that what we know about their context is fragmentary and elusive. Similarly with this novel, once I realised that the author was deliberately withholding plot elements rather than me having missed them somewhere in the discontinuous narrative, I was content to simply let the story unfold.

Read the rest of this review at
http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201... . There are some minor spoilers.