Still my favourite Ondaatje.

Toronto. 1920s. Bloor Street Viaduct is being built, and the immigrants are the unseen forces of work and power.

Patrick Lewis sees the world with a poet's or a hero's eye, even though he doesn't know it. His relationships with Alice and Clara are mythic and yet very real at the same time - some of the language and the scenes are the kind of thing you think of on a rainy day when you're lonely.

All of the other characters are also pretty amazing - especially Temelkoff the baker and Caravaggio the thief.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if you are reading poetry or fiction, and that's part of the loveliness of this book.

Hana, Patrick's daughter, will go on to star in another one of his books.

Мајкл Ондачи е за мене нов автор и морав да го побарам на гугл за да сфатам колку всушност бил познат. Неговата книга „Англискиот пациент“ е добитник на Букерова награда за литература, а според неа беше снимен и филм кој доби девет оскари во 1997 година. А Англискиот пациент е всушност продолжение на романот за кој сакам да зборувам.

„Во лавовска кожа“ е напишан во далечната 1987 година и не знам како не е преведен до сега на македонски јазик. Причина: ликовите се македонски емигранти во Канада. А авторот е роден во Шри Ланка , а живее и работи во Канада. И токму македонските ликови ме привлекоа да ја купам книгава.

Приказната ја раскажува Патрик, главниот лик, кој заедно со татко му, учествува во изградбата на мостот Принц Едвард во Торонто. Еден од работниците е и Никола Темелков, Македонец од Преспа, кој ги работи најтешките работи на мостот и најдобро е платен за тоа. Постои и ресторанот Охридско Езеро каде се собираат работниците на крајот на денот, каде Патрик научува што е сарма и барајќи храна за својата игуана, го научува македонскиот збор „гуштер“. Се спријателува со Никола, Коста, Елена. Ја запознава Клара, Алис и малечката Хана. Преку раскажувањето на Патрик, авторот ја открива историјата на Канада, ветената земја градена од доселеници од целиот свет кои со себе донеле по малку од своето дома за да се чувствуваат помалку осамени во новиот дом. Бегалци од војна, бегалци од затвор, калуѓерки, криминалци, богати, сиромашни, сите ги спојува едно, желба за подобро утре.

Авторот има интересен стил на пишување. На моменти мислев дека читам поезија. Кога раскажува Патрик, се прашував која е границата помеѓу реалноста и неговата фантазија. Се преплетуваат реални факти и соништа, вистински случки и фантазија. Малку невообичаено за мој вкус, ама сепак ми се допадна. Интересна приказна која вреди да се прочита!

Superbly written historical fiction which had me Googling a myriad of information to discern out fact and fiction.

Intended on reading this and The English Patient as a pair about fifteen years ago, only got this one done, and since this is the year I am devoting to clearing my shelves of the decade-plus queuers, and my memory of books starts to fade after six or so months these days due to the frequency read, and everything about this one had long left me, it was time to give this another go before the other. Not as great this time around as I apparently thought it was the first time, it is still a very solid early novel. I expect bigger things from The English Patient.

compelling, beautiful, breathtaking, poetic. Will fill your head with unforgettable images - a nun falling from a half built bridge caught by a daredevil construction worker, tunnels illuminated by torchlight under a lake, explosions and prison escapes, necklaces, cows stuck in rivers, a room filled with hanging mysterious puppets slowly twirling, a man painted like the sky, clothes and all, light and sound filling your senses. Sometimes I didn't believe the dialogue, but was carried along anyway.

This is like some kind of magic word trickery. Ondaatje shifts between tenses with brilliant deftness and seeps into the fabric of a diaspora of migrant workers building a modern nation and struggling to earn a fair wage. I feel like I will forever see that nun flying - falling from the construction of the bridge in Toronto. Poetic and vivid imagery that lingers.

I loved the writing, and I managed to read it fairly quickly, but overall I wasn't too invested in the characters and plot. This was one of his first novels, and I look forward to reading more of his. I absolutely loved his next book, The English Patient.

If you were to ask me what this book was about, I wouldn't be able to answer you. Literally, 90% of this book didn't make sense to me.

Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately) I'm not obliged to write a review about it since I only read it for school. - I would have DNFed it ages ago if I could. :p

Kay, byeeeee.

2 stars!

Michael Ondaatje writes with a rare, original and genuinely vivid clarity. That is, the images that he paints jump off the page, grab you by the lapels and shake you. While other writers have this talent, this writer has the soul of a poet and the net effect is that you are moved by what you read. It's impossible for his creative penchants for metaphor, simile, characterization and imagery not to get inside your head and fire your imagination. Some of the scenes are hauntingly beautiful, especially the rescue of a nun upon a bridge and night skating under a full moon with burning flares. He writes about humble people with hard lives and major tragic flaws in Canada. This novel is character-driven and the characters, though not always worthy, are individuals with quirks, gifts, flaws and dark experience. His portrait work is quite extraordinary as each person is uniquely human, which is a mark of strong fiction writing. The book is quite short, easy to read, intriguing and original: there's nothing formulaic in the storyline. I respect how the story line closes back in upon itself in its denouement, which proves satisfying and life affirming and humane. This novel is a haunting read, the cinematic imagery of which will linger in your memory and satisfy with its humanity.

What we SEE in a novel depends mainly on what we look for, I guess.
On p98, Ondaatje gave me what I was looking for…
“He(Patrick Lewis) was a creature of habit, he belonged with the last century.” I was HOOKED on the BOOK after that.

One way, that I think, an author can successfully reach(hook) their readers is through their use of metaphors. The entire book is amply loaded with them!! The little movie projector in my mind came to life as I read. I would like to think I fully understood on p124 what the author meant when he wrote, “YOU DON'T WANT POWER. You were born to be a younger brother.” Sometimes you think you want to disappear, but all you really want is to be found.

A beautifully put together novel about history, romance, friendship and a mystery of sorts. It’s an imaginative recreation of some real life events in local Canadian history mixed with a very gratifying love story but sort of told in a surreal way. I did have to go back several times and re-read a few of the pages now and again to better understand some of the author’s writing.
I most definitely fancied the early twentieth century setting of the novel.

I was also able to appreciate how the author conveyed the many difficulties and hardships of the working class immigrants who came to Canada for a better life. They worked tirelessly for everything they had. NOTHING was freely given to them. Poverty forced them to work long grueling hours at oftentimes not so glorious menial jobs for little to nothing wages and in BRUTAL conditions and extreme climates.

I sort of felt for Patrick Lewis’ character right from the onset of how the author depicted the story of his childhood. His childhood(he) seemed lonesome and isolated. It, or I guess I should say, he, lacked his own sense of identity. As the novel went on, each new chapter on his journey seemed to be helping him find his identity, his own story. Through his connection with his love interests, Clara and then Alice, who both helped draw him out of his solitude and as expected by the end of the novel, he began to come into his own skin (not ‘In the Skin of a Lion’ any longer)(although while ‘In the Skin of a Lion’, he was most definitely a force to be reckoned with)(maybe revered as the king of the urban jungle in some small fashion) I’m sort of a root for the underdog kinda gal so when it seemed like Patrick had emotional and psychological barricades within him, it made me want to see him triumph at some point before the story line ended. He had difficulties approaching people as he feared rejection(don’t we all have moments like that?) One of the author’s other metaphors illustrated this point…:There was a wall in him that no one reached…a tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown within him and which he carried around because he could not shed it…it had entered him at the wrong time in his life…” (he needed to set off an explosion inside himself and blow that wall up) anyhow, as the novel moves forward, so eventually does Patrick, probably in part because of his love for Clara, Alice and Hana(Alice’s daughter, whom he eventually comes to refer to as his daughter) The author sort of gets the point across that In our lifetime we have to find something or someone that anchors us. This helps to keep you looking forward. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let someone love you.

In do time, Patrick becomes one with the immigrants(because even though he is Canadian, he is somehow a refugee from his solitary country upbringing and has difficulties fitting in with city life), he strives to help give the ones who did the work to help build parts of this Canadian nation, a voice. It’s amazing what ‘radical’ things you might find yourself doing for someone you love. A certain someone, who, they themselves gave up a way of life that they no longer believed in for one reason or another… hmm, from ‘nun to radical’ … must have been a sign from above blowing off that bridge one night and not dying…hmm!!
There’s always 3 sides to every story though, right?? Yours, mine and the truth. In this novel you can see the three sides too, rich, poor and the ‘real’ story(truth). I think some of the whole purpose of the book was to give a voice to the passive and vulnerable people(immigrants) of the early twentieth century.

By the end of the book, on the very last page, it’s like you realize the end is really the beginning of the story…

I would definitely encourage people to read this novel(mature adult readers that is, not so much for a younger crowd simply because of the incredibly sensual/passionate activities of physical connections between individuals strewn throughout)(at least one such scenario in particular even made me blush, is it hot in here or is it just me??)

All in all, I absolutely loved Michael Ondaatje story-telling. It’s not a perfect read, but close enough to still deserve 5 stars from my perspective.

There were moments of beauty and visual acuity, but more often there were moments of muddlesome bemusement. Story arcs left hanging, dangling tantalizingly (a nun falling off a bridge to be caught in mid-air, but then what...?)--abandoned, but returned to eventually. Satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. There is a quote in the book that seems to sum up my feelings of this book:

"Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become. Within two years of 1066, work began on the Bayeux Tapestry, Constantin the African brought Greek medicine to the western world. The chaos and tumble of events. 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."

This book is a chaotic tumble of events, and the author tries to be the "best art" bringing order to it all, but I'm not sure if it works entirely for me. Though there are moments....

This is my first novel by this author. This book was recommended to me by a librarian. The writing was very beautiful, he has a way with words, that I found engaging. The prose is very poetic. But I don’t think that alone makes for great literary work. I don’t think I enjoyed the characters, I didn’t sympathise with them. It’s not that the book is bad it does have great moments. There were moments where stories were not completed, which was a little frustrating. It wasn’t aj overly bad experience.

“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. . . ."