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Divisadero (Vintage International)
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage
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Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Divisadero (Vintage International) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307279323
ISBN: 0307279324
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-04-22
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 2008-04-22
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307279323
ISBN: 0307279324
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-04-22
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 2008-04-22
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Divisadero (Vintage International)
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.
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.
Customer Reviews of Divisadero (Vintage International)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: DIVISADERO--PURE MAGIC
Review: Some years ago, after Michael Ondaatje had written "The English Patient," I finagled an invitation to a private reading held by the Canadian Consulate for an exclusive group of business executives. Upon arrival, my husband and I were quickly unmasked as fakes, but, enduring the slings and arrows of whispered remarks and sidelong glances, we held our ground and remained for the reading. When Ondaatje appeared, I found him a simple man in dress, humble in manner, and a diffident reader of his works. I recall thinking that if only I wrote prose like his I would strut, not fret, my hour upon the stage.
After reading this introduction, you'll probably not be very surprised by my confession that when it comes to Michael Ondaatje's works I'm like a besotted teenager when faced with the object of her desire. I find his words magical, his creations dreamlike. Which brings me to "Divisadero," Ondaatje's most recent novel, a much debated and often maligned work.
In "Divisadero" Ondaatje explores the bonds of family: the family given us through blood-relation and the family we choose. Anna, is the only daughter of a Northern California widowed farmer who adopts another girl, Claire, when Anna's and Claire's mothers both die in childbirth. Born just hours apart, Claire becomes Anna's "twin." The orphaned son of a neighboring farm couple, Coop, is already part of the family. "Divisadero" is the story of these three. We meet them briefly as teenagers, see the family torn apart, then follow each of them as they continue their separate lives. Claire and Coop meet again, accidentally, but providentially.
Coop's story seems to strike some reviewers as the least satisfactory, charging the writer with having created and then abandoned this character. Coop represents the random violence all of us often face in life through war, fate, or of our own making. Coop's parents were murdered when he was just a boy, he is taken into this neighboring family, then expelled, cruelly and violently. Although he is a temperate man, violence follows him like his own shadow until Claire gently guides him home. This, to me, is a very poignant scene and a most satisfactory conclusion to Coop's story.
But Anna is the focus and storyteller of "Divisadero." Although she leaves home and country, her siblings and father are never far from her heart and mind. She finds her soulmate in the past life of Lucien Segura, a poet whose writing and life story she explores as she settles into his house in the small village in Southern France and chooses his "adopted" son as companion. This is where Ondaatje's writing turns truly magical. As Anna's and Segura's stories intertwine, the scenes become stunningly sensual, gorgeously trancelike.
When I finished "Divisadero," I felt such a loss, I had to re-read this book at once. I wanted again to take part in the lives of the ill-fated Marie-Neige and her husband, Roman, an incarnation of the enigmatic Coop, all raw rage, which he is unable to verbalize. I wanted again to eat a simple meal of herbs and onions grown in the garden of a small farm house in Southern France on a warm summer's day. And I wanted again to dance with no purpose with a cat. So find yourself a quiet corner in a garden or a sun-filled room and let one of our generation's greatest writers awaken your senses, touch your heart, and seduce you with this magic dance called "Divisadero."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: less than I expected
Review: I was enthused by the first segment of what I thought would be a full novel with a single plot. To my disappointment, the author created three short novels with a barely visible connection among the parts. I thought there was ample room for an expansion of the life and times of Cooper, a principal character. But perhaps I am prejudiced by never having had enough to read about California, casino gambling and the rough, tough times going all the way from Gold Rush days up to the present Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and all the fascinations surrounding those exciting places. Overall, Divisadero was a moderate disappointment. I was struck, however by the author's occasional but punchy ant-war comments.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Divisadero - A Must Read
Review: I picked this book because I like the English Patient so much, but after reading it, I believe it was a far superior writing style than I have read in many a year. He is captivating in his word structure and imagery.I am recommending it to all as a must read! A classic!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A bit of a disappointment
Review: Ondaatje's "Divisadero" is a poetic work, but I find the story to be lacking substance and force. While spinning the tales of several families from different eras, and with hintings of supposedly meaningful comparisons between them, the connection seems weak. There are three parts to this novel:
Part I: Anna, Claire, and Coop;
Part II: The Family in the Cart;
Part III; The House in Demu.
In my opinion the three parts are better read separately than as a coherent whole, because the only common thread is the character named Lucien Segura. Sometimes Ondaatje's writing in "Divisadero" is suggestive and vague, as in the final passage in the novel that describes a disastrous boating event, which can be frustrating because of the uncertainty. While serving as a pleasurable read, "Divisadero" fails to be enlightening. The best parts of the novel is about the romance of lovers. Not recommended for serious reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Everything is collage"
Review: Michael Ondaatje writes in his new novel, "[T]here is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross." At one level "Divisadero" is such a collage, spreading scenarios across more than one hundred years and several continents. Initially seemingly disconnected events and individual stories are nevertheless intertwined in some way. They converge around Anna, the anchor in the narrative who brings the different segments together. At another level, Ondaatje's exquisitely written novel is about recurring themes of identity, love, loss and pain, and the potentially healing power of passing time and remembrance. Completely absorbing, I found it deeply moving and enriching. A book to be read more than once to be fully appreciated in composition and content.
A certain mystique surrounds the title; its varied possible interpretations find their echo in the structure of the novel and the personal histories of the protagonists. According to Anna "divisadero" means "to divide" and also "to gaze at from afar". A pivotal experience at some point in each protagonist's life has broken its continuity, resulting in a major change or split in their life from then on. Some inner consolidation may be achieved as time allows for re-examination of the past and discovering of similarities in others. Ondaatje uses different voices and perspectives to bring to the reader more than one linear narrative. The novel's structure also reminded me of a musical composition: across the distinct 'movements' themes are nonetheless recurring, and innocuous motifs, such as the shards of glass, can take on symbolic character in their repetition; parallels in the protagonists' lives are slowly revealed and linkages established. With each reiteration, new aspects of the story are introduced for the reader to explore.
The actual plot can be summarized very quickly. It is evidently not Ondaatje's primary motivation for writing "Divisadero". His interest clearly lies in exploring the essence of his characters, their feelings and sensuality, their interaction with others and their physical environments and finally, their ability to recover (or not) from deep trauma. A widower raises his daughter, Anna, and adopts an orphan girl, Claire, born on the same day, as a pseudo twin sister for her. Coop, son of a local farm hand, also an orphan, is added to the small family. When the girls are sixteen, a devastating event abruptly ends the until then mostly idyllic life in rural northern California. They break apart, each coping in a different way with what they experienced. "The raw truth of an incident never ends" Anna reflects later on. Claire's and Coop's stories are interleafed with Anna's. Coop's character, in particular, is expertly drawn, as he lives out the challenges of his youth.
We meet "Anna" again, living in Southern France, as a biographer, researching the life of Lucien Seguro, a little known author who lived there nearly a century ago. She has since shed her name and former identity. Her life becomes indirectly linked to the writer she studies, in part through Rafael, who was connected to Lucien in a similar vein that Coop was connected to Anna's family. While the narrative switches to Seguro's life, his coming of age and the people surrounding him, we are led to make connections, see parallels. Ondaatje's sensitive exploration of the growing fondness between Lucien and his young neighbour, Marie-Neige, is one of the most touching and haunting love stories one can imagine. Comparisons are invited between Anna's life and Lucien's. At every stage, though, Ondaatje leaves us guessing who the narrator is. Is everything written by Anna? Nietzsche's "We have art, so that we shall not be destroyed by the truth", is initially introduced by Anna on page one of the novel, and later repeated. While we are receiving signals that Anna's recollections may not be necessarily the only version of the truth, Ondaatje leaves the question open to interpretation. In a wider sense, encompassing the whole novel, there are hints of an "invented life" - to make it less painful and to come to terms with her abandonment of her sister and Coop in a time of crisis. The beginning is in the end completing the collage created. [Friederike Knabe]
Review Summary: DIVISADERO--PURE MAGIC
Review: Some years ago, after Michael Ondaatje had written "The English Patient," I finagled an invitation to a private reading held by the Canadian Consulate for an exclusive group of business executives. Upon arrival, my husband and I were quickly unmasked as fakes, but, enduring the slings and arrows of whispered remarks and sidelong glances, we held our ground and remained for the reading. When Ondaatje appeared, I found him a simple man in dress, humble in manner, and a diffident reader of his works. I recall thinking that if only I wrote prose like his I would strut, not fret, my hour upon the stage.
After reading this introduction, you'll probably not be very surprised by my confession that when it comes to Michael Ondaatje's works I'm like a besotted teenager when faced with the object of her desire. I find his words magical, his creations dreamlike. Which brings me to "Divisadero," Ondaatje's most recent novel, a much debated and often maligned work.
In "Divisadero" Ondaatje explores the bonds of family: the family given us through blood-relation and the family we choose. Anna, is the only daughter of a Northern California widowed farmer who adopts another girl, Claire, when Anna's and Claire's mothers both die in childbirth. Born just hours apart, Claire becomes Anna's "twin." The orphaned son of a neighboring farm couple, Coop, is already part of the family. "Divisadero" is the story of these three. We meet them briefly as teenagers, see the family torn apart, then follow each of them as they continue their separate lives. Claire and Coop meet again, accidentally, but providentially.
Coop's story seems to strike some reviewers as the least satisfactory, charging the writer with having created and then abandoned this character. Coop represents the random violence all of us often face in life through war, fate, or of our own making. Coop's parents were murdered when he was just a boy, he is taken into this neighboring family, then expelled, cruelly and violently. Although he is a temperate man, violence follows him like his own shadow until Claire gently guides him home. This, to me, is a very poignant scene and a most satisfactory conclusion to Coop's story.
But Anna is the focus and storyteller of "Divisadero." Although she leaves home and country, her siblings and father are never far from her heart and mind. She finds her soulmate in the past life of Lucien Segura, a poet whose writing and life story she explores as she settles into his house in the small village in Southern France and chooses his "adopted" son as companion. This is where Ondaatje's writing turns truly magical. As Anna's and Segura's stories intertwine, the scenes become stunningly sensual, gorgeously trancelike.
When I finished "Divisadero," I felt such a loss, I had to re-read this book at once. I wanted again to take part in the lives of the ill-fated Marie-Neige and her husband, Roman, an incarnation of the enigmatic Coop, all raw rage, which he is unable to verbalize. I wanted again to eat a simple meal of herbs and onions grown in the garden of a small farm house in Southern France on a warm summer's day. And I wanted again to dance with no purpose with a cat. So find yourself a quiet corner in a garden or a sun-filled room and let one of our generation's greatest writers awaken your senses, touch your heart, and seduce you with this magic dance called "Divisadero."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: less than I expected
Review: I was enthused by the first segment of what I thought would be a full novel with a single plot. To my disappointment, the author created three short novels with a barely visible connection among the parts. I thought there was ample room for an expansion of the life and times of Cooper, a principal character. But perhaps I am prejudiced by never having had enough to read about California, casino gambling and the rough, tough times going all the way from Gold Rush days up to the present Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and all the fascinations surrounding those exciting places. Overall, Divisadero was a moderate disappointment. I was struck, however by the author's occasional but punchy ant-war comments.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Divisadero - A Must Read
Review: I picked this book because I like the English Patient so much, but after reading it, I believe it was a far superior writing style than I have read in many a year. He is captivating in his word structure and imagery.I am recommending it to all as a must read! A classic!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A bit of a disappointment
Review: Ondaatje's "Divisadero" is a poetic work, but I find the story to be lacking substance and force. While spinning the tales of several families from different eras, and with hintings of supposedly meaningful comparisons between them, the connection seems weak. There are three parts to this novel:
Part I: Anna, Claire, and Coop;
Part II: The Family in the Cart;
Part III; The House in Demu.
In my opinion the three parts are better read separately than as a coherent whole, because the only common thread is the character named Lucien Segura. Sometimes Ondaatje's writing in "Divisadero" is suggestive and vague, as in the final passage in the novel that describes a disastrous boating event, which can be frustrating because of the uncertainty. While serving as a pleasurable read, "Divisadero" fails to be enlightening. The best parts of the novel is about the romance of lovers. Not recommended for serious reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Everything is collage"
Review: Michael Ondaatje writes in his new novel, "[T]here is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross." At one level "Divisadero" is such a collage, spreading scenarios across more than one hundred years and several continents. Initially seemingly disconnected events and individual stories are nevertheless intertwined in some way. They converge around Anna, the anchor in the narrative who brings the different segments together. At another level, Ondaatje's exquisitely written novel is about recurring themes of identity, love, loss and pain, and the potentially healing power of passing time and remembrance. Completely absorbing, I found it deeply moving and enriching. A book to be read more than once to be fully appreciated in composition and content.
A certain mystique surrounds the title; its varied possible interpretations find their echo in the structure of the novel and the personal histories of the protagonists. According to Anna "divisadero" means "to divide" and also "to gaze at from afar". A pivotal experience at some point in each protagonist's life has broken its continuity, resulting in a major change or split in their life from then on. Some inner consolidation may be achieved as time allows for re-examination of the past and discovering of similarities in others. Ondaatje uses different voices and perspectives to bring to the reader more than one linear narrative. The novel's structure also reminded me of a musical composition: across the distinct 'movements' themes are nonetheless recurring, and innocuous motifs, such as the shards of glass, can take on symbolic character in their repetition; parallels in the protagonists' lives are slowly revealed and linkages established. With each reiteration, new aspects of the story are introduced for the reader to explore.
The actual plot can be summarized very quickly. It is evidently not Ondaatje's primary motivation for writing "Divisadero". His interest clearly lies in exploring the essence of his characters, their feelings and sensuality, their interaction with others and their physical environments and finally, their ability to recover (or not) from deep trauma. A widower raises his daughter, Anna, and adopts an orphan girl, Claire, born on the same day, as a pseudo twin sister for her. Coop, son of a local farm hand, also an orphan, is added to the small family. When the girls are sixteen, a devastating event abruptly ends the until then mostly idyllic life in rural northern California. They break apart, each coping in a different way with what they experienced. "The raw truth of an incident never ends" Anna reflects later on. Claire's and Coop's stories are interleafed with Anna's. Coop's character, in particular, is expertly drawn, as he lives out the challenges of his youth.
We meet "Anna" again, living in Southern France, as a biographer, researching the life of Lucien Seguro, a little known author who lived there nearly a century ago. She has since shed her name and former identity. Her life becomes indirectly linked to the writer she studies, in part through Rafael, who was connected to Lucien in a similar vein that Coop was connected to Anna's family. While the narrative switches to Seguro's life, his coming of age and the people surrounding him, we are led to make connections, see parallels. Ondaatje's sensitive exploration of the growing fondness between Lucien and his young neighbour, Marie-Neige, is one of the most touching and haunting love stories one can imagine. Comparisons are invited between Anna's life and Lucien's. At every stage, though, Ondaatje leaves us guessing who the narrator is. Is everything written by Anna? Nietzsche's "We have art, so that we shall not be destroyed by the truth", is initially introduced by Anna on page one of the novel, and later repeated. While we are receiving signals that Anna's recollections may not be necessarily the only version of the truth, Ondaatje leaves the question open to interpretation. In a wider sense, encompassing the whole novel, there are hints of an "invented life" - to make it less painful and to come to terms with her abandonment of her sister and Coop in a time of crisis. The beginning is in the end completing the collage created. [Friederike Knabe]