On 2009-12-29 Yasmin H. McEwen, Ice skating over platitudes of longing wrote: This is a book that I keep near me for re-reading on several occassions. Even after having read Divisadero more than a couple times, I don´t feel that I can do the book justice with just a simple review.
The first portion of the book reads as if stepping into a scene from Heaven and experiencing life on a ranch with Claire, Anna, Coop and Claire and Anna´s father. Life on the ranch falls neatly into place until the inevitable happens. The fall. Ondaatje´s narration is so deft and lyrical that one forgets they are reading at times. After the fall, Coop´s story moves into center stage and what is a spotlight on a rare treat the life of an orphan who is also a fairly good card counter. Passage into sin. Through this we see Coop as he is merely drifting through life as if riding out a duststorm of longing. I don´t want to give it all away, but Coop´s story is quite riveting after the idyllic life in Northern California has ended. And then Ondaatje does what he is so good at he takes the reader by the hand and pulls them into the French countryside to ride on a wagon with Lucien Segura. The light is dim as the reader travels along an unused road and listens to the birds in the darkness of early morning. A man wades out into a sea of grass claiming he´s home. A scared boy rides a horse that´s been spooked through the panic ridden night; nothing to hold onto but thick tufts of mane, while the blue light is all around and villages become dark splotches to be left behind. A pickpocket falls in love and stands within the grainy light of an old cottage watching Marie-Neige as she washes off the dirt caked memories and her eyes fill up with the past. The 2nd and third half of the book are some of the best examples of writing I´ve seen in awhile. There are passages that literally take their time in opening up the forest for the reader. I simply cannot undertake the task of dissecting them and holding them up to the light, because Ondaatje´s words are still butterflies in my mind; these words to me are still very much alive, and how their wings are beating. . And summed up by saying Like a cadence of longing these lovely characters will sing their songs into your soul. Currently Divisadero has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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Vintage International claimed From the celebrated author of The English Patient and Anil´s Ghost comes a remarkable, intimate novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time. In the 1970s in Northern California a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is shattered by an incident of violence that sets fire to the rest of their lives. Divisadero takes us from San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada´s casinos and eventually to the landscape of southern France. As the narrative moves back and forth through time and place, we find each of the characters trying to find some foothold in a present shadowed by the past.
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