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Sunday morning book review
Dec. 19th, 2010 10:02 amMichael Ondaatje's In the Skin of Lion is a book that found me, rather than me finding it. Someone recommended it to me once, but I don't remember who, or when. I scribbled it on one of my many to-read lists, and then one year at Christmastime, it made it onto my wish-list. I don't remember who gave it to me. I don't know why, after all these years on my shelf, I chose now as the moment to read it. This history, shrouded in vagueness and unremembered detail, is fitting for this book in which connections and motivations are always veiled, and the forces that operate in the lives of the characters are not ours to see.
In the Skin of a Lion is mainly about Patrick Lewis--the other characters come into the story through their relationships with him. There is Clara Dickens, a beautiful actress with whom Patrick has a torrid affair; Alice Gull, another actress, best friend of Clara, and, later, lover of Patrick; and Caravaggio, a thief who serves time in prison with Patrick. Although Patrick is at the center of the web that binds these characters together, we know him least of all of them. He seeks anonymity and thwarts connection, choosing to live and work surrounded by immigrants whose languages he doesn't speak. Ondaatje shows us Patrick's actions, but only rarely lets us hear him speak or allows into his heart or mind. And so Patrick achieves with the readers the same sort of anonymous existence that he has in his Toronto neighborhood, in the midst of communities of Macedonians and Italians.
Sex and work are the two poles around which the book revolves. Ondaatje spends lots of time on both, but--perhaps contrary to expectation--his writing shines most when he lingers on the details of work. The work he is interested in is hard physical labor, and, in this book set in the 1930s, the world of work is a world of men. Ondaatje gives us bridge-builders, bakers, tanners, tunnel-diggers, and loggers, each described with meticulous attention to the details of the profession. Although rendered in plain prose, these descriptions sing. So much so that the writing about sex, which is always passionate and intense in this book, feels flat in comparison.
In my first post about this book, I described the experience of reading as like looking through a keyhole, and now that I've finished it, I can't find any description better than that. I spied on scenes of great intensity, but could not always link the images that I saw to the things that must have happened in other rooms, the conversations and intimacies that took place beyond my keyhole's purview. I think that the images of this book will stay with me after the plot has fallen away: men skating on a frozen river at night, holding flaming cattails over their heads to light their way; Clara and Alice coming with paper and glowing candles into Patrick's room, crouching on the floor to draw him while he sleeps.
In the Skin of a Lion is mainly about Patrick Lewis--the other characters come into the story through their relationships with him. There is Clara Dickens, a beautiful actress with whom Patrick has a torrid affair; Alice Gull, another actress, best friend of Clara, and, later, lover of Patrick; and Caravaggio, a thief who serves time in prison with Patrick. Although Patrick is at the center of the web that binds these characters together, we know him least of all of them. He seeks anonymity and thwarts connection, choosing to live and work surrounded by immigrants whose languages he doesn't speak. Ondaatje shows us Patrick's actions, but only rarely lets us hear him speak or allows into his heart or mind. And so Patrick achieves with the readers the same sort of anonymous existence that he has in his Toronto neighborhood, in the midst of communities of Macedonians and Italians.
Sex and work are the two poles around which the book revolves. Ondaatje spends lots of time on both, but--perhaps contrary to expectation--his writing shines most when he lingers on the details of work. The work he is interested in is hard physical labor, and, in this book set in the 1930s, the world of work is a world of men. Ondaatje gives us bridge-builders, bakers, tanners, tunnel-diggers, and loggers, each described with meticulous attention to the details of the profession. Although rendered in plain prose, these descriptions sing. So much so that the writing about sex, which is always passionate and intense in this book, feels flat in comparison.
In my first post about this book, I described the experience of reading as like looking through a keyhole, and now that I've finished it, I can't find any description better than that. I spied on scenes of great intensity, but could not always link the images that I saw to the things that must have happened in other rooms, the conversations and intimacies that took place beyond my keyhole's purview. I think that the images of this book will stay with me after the plot has fallen away: men skating on a frozen river at night, holding flaming cattails over their heads to light their way; Clara and Alice coming with paper and glowing candles into Patrick's room, crouching on the floor to draw him while he sleeps.
