Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion: Post-Victorian Ontario remorse
Written: Apr 27 '01 (Updated May 10 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Lyrical and captivating, Ondaatje's characters live; you feel their fatigue, sense their inner thoughts
Cons: Perfect as it is, I wanted more of it. Left me wanting more.
The Bottom Line: I recommend you read this book, and then buy another copy and loan it to your friends to read. Then visit Ontario and see all the places he writes about.
|
|
|
| pageclot's Full Review: Michael Ondaatje - In the Skin of a Lion: A Novel |
Reading In the Skin of a Lion for the first time was like revisiting my past. As a child, on our trips to my Grandparent’s house, I would look at the old buildings, half tumbled down behind newer houses, and wonder what went on in them. My Grandfather knew all the back roads and back-back roads in Grey County, and he used to drive us down them, pointing out where the roads used to be, the shells of old barns, abandoned gravel pits only partially grown over. In the Skin of a Lion projected me back to that time, and further back, to when the grown over houses were alive with people, just after the turn of the last century.
In the Skin of a Lion is one of my favourite books. It resonates so strongly within me that years later, small details, cast-offs really, insinuate themselves into my daydreaming. Driving down Keele Street in Toronto, barely aware of anything but the traffic, I would drive past the stockyards, smell that stockyard smell, and be instantly reminded of a brief scene from In the Skin of a Lion, in which the tannery workers stand under showers for many minutes before the red dye falls from their bodies like a sheet falling from their shoulders.
I would drive over the Bloor Street Viaduct, and remember Nicholas Temelkoff, a daredevil, flinging himself underneath, on ropes, with pullies and straps, doing a thousand and one things to push the construction along more quickly.
Or walking by the Harris filtration plant, I would be reminded of the scenes underneath Lake Ontario, with Patrick Lewis digging at the muck, extending the water intake pipe 1.5 miles out into the Lake, ensuring that generations of Torontonians would have access to clean water.
The Joyful will stoop with sorrow
Ondaatje's celebration of the painful joy of labour and the all-consuming nature of obsessive love resonates in me so because he writes of small towns I've visited, bridges I've crossed, railroad overpasses I drive by on a daily basis. He gives these places a past I never knew they possessed, gives them a dignity that we try to erase with our strip malls, furniture outlets, and big box hardware stores. Ondaatje's early twentieth century Ontario is filled with the precision of labour, and the bone weariness of hard work, and the grace of workers. Ondaatje's Ontario is made real by his elegant handling of everyday details; schoolchildren tearing off chunks of tar from a roadbed to chew like gum, wash set out on a line freezing solid in the winter air, woodcutters skating on the frozen Napanee River, flaming cattails used as torches.
and when you have gone to earth
Travel through any part of Southern Ontario. You'll see the ghosts of our past in old railroad cuts, the tracks ripped up, alder growing in their place, sometimes up to 5 inches thick around. You'll see the ghosts in abandoned roads, barely glimpsed from the straightened 4 lane highways, roads too curved, narrow, and therfore too slow for our modern impatience with travel.
I will let my hair grow long for your sake
Ondaatje brings these ghosts to life with his stories. In the Skin of a Lion is a book, ultimately, about the importance of stories. At the centre of one of the novel's stories, and connected by the slenderest of threads to most of the others is one Patrick Lewis, Canadian-born, from rural eastern Ontario. His early life is spent following his father on the log drives, watching and helping while his father sets explosive charges to free log jams on the Napanee river. Later we follow him as he moves to Toronto and joins the search for Ambrose Small, source of one of Canada's greatest missing-persons mysteries. Small was a theatre owner, and late in December 1919, he sold his holdings in the theatres, and disappeared. Patrick signs up as a searcher, and in the process of beating the bushes looking for Small, finds Clara Dickens, former mistress of Small, and loses himself.
We meet other people (and hear their stories too). Alice Gull, an actress friend of Clara (her story is her dealings with the Hungarian anarchists, and how she came to know Clara Dickens). Nicholas Temelkoff, a daredevil and baker (his story is the immigrant’s story; how he came to Canada, how he learned the language, how he met Alice Gull). Caravaggio, the neighbourhood thief (his story is how he met his wife, how he became a thief, and how he came to know Patrick Lewis). Finally, there is Hana (her story is yet to come, in The English Patient, with Caravaggio). Everything is connected. Everything.
I will wander through the wilderness
Ondaatje’s writing is particularly powerful when describing the processes of work and also when describing the depths of grief. His description of the heroic construction of the Bloor Danforth viaduct is given special significance, much like the Giants-Dodgers game of 1951 in Don DeLillo’s Underworld. It’s a centrepiece, a gleaming jewel of a story that could stand alone, but when inserted into In the Skin of a Lion, anchors the rest of the stories.
His Patrick Lewis passages, particularly in the section titled Remorse, when read slowly, and again after you’ve finished the book the first time, are devastating, reeking of sadness and desolation. It is this section that makes the ending of the novel so filled with hope and excitement.
In the Skin of a Lion
If I were a begging man, I’d beg you to read In the Skin of a Lion, just so we could all share these memories, and I could allude to sections of the book and be understood by all of you. I’m not, so I’ll just suggest that you read it. I’ll declare that your lives may not be changed by this book, but perhaps, like me, your lives will be enhanced by the richness of its voice. If books can have souls, In the Skin of a Lion’s soul is troubled, challenged, and ultimately raggedly prevailing.
Comparisons
The best book I can think of to compare In the Skin of a Lion to is Doctorow’s Ragtime. The tone of both, that of a slightly distanced viewer, is similar. Ondaatje is more naked in his emotions at times, and Doctorow occasionally falls into the trap of Historical Romance fiction, in which the primary characters meet every significant contemporary public figure (Houdini, Freud, Harry Thaw, Emma Goldman, etc etc). However, both offer an illumination of a time period. The writing style of both is exploratory and fair. Ondaatje focuses more on the labourer, his thoughts and hopes and dreams. Both are good reads. Ondaatje is more intimate. Doctorow more scholarly.
Note: The title headings above (aside from Comparisons) are from The Epic of Gilgamesh as shown on the quotation page of In the Skin of a Lion. The other quotation shown there is from the Marxist author/art critic, John Berger:
Never again will a single story be told
as though it were the only one
I'd like to direct your attention to wickengel's review of this book. I believe his/her analysis would enhance your enjoyment of the book, and I also believe it is superior to my own review. If you don't believe me, just read it and be convinced.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.