Warlight

I loved the first half. Hated the second. Really slow moving and confusing as to who was narrating the story. Feel like I wasted a week reading this book. The whole chapter about playing chess. Yikes! I get it the mothers life was a game of cat and mouse and like a game of chess. But do we really need to know how one game was played. No thanks

Loved the first half. hated the second

I was really enjoying this book in the first half. Really interesting characters and a great plot. When the mother comes home the book really changed. The writing style changed and I became quite bored and confused as to who the narrator truly was. 1st person, second person, third person. But I think it was a mix but I could not tell if the narration was conjuncture or did it happen. Too confusing for me.

It feels shallow to describe Ondaatje's prose as beautiful — surely I should be able to find a more piquant adjective — but it really is. His words shimmer. They give his characters' grief and trauma space to breathe, and his scenes are so tactile that, weeks later, I occasionally find myself thinking of blue cardigans, walled gardens, and the rain pouring through the roof of a postwar London house.

Not my style.

Oh, ah. I had some trouble getting through this. It's my fault. I was kind of expecting an adult version of Series of Unfortunate Events. Instead, I got Nathaniel who was very...introspective about his mother's adventures during and after the war and this crazy cast of characters who were up to somethings that were probably very exciting and super clandestine and I wish I had a nickel for every time I thought: This story would be so much better if we were watching it through another character's eyes. Nathaniel was just boring.
So, I leave Warlight with a new appreciation for greyhounds and my patience seriously tested.

What a revelatory follow-up to fellow Man Booker nominee Snap: Warlight that is. Suddenly I understand just how much Yankees love their cop dramas and Brits love their espionage. And I'm hoping these are the two worst this year's long list has to offer.

In my review of Snap, I ranted a bit about my dislike for the modern crime novel. Mysteries in general are very boring to me. I don't care about the crime. Well, guess what? Spy stories are a chore too. But I won't bore you with more on that...

I was looking forward to Warlight. Aside from a poetry collection, I haven't read the work of Michael Ondaatje before. I expected good things. But from page one, I found this novel lacking. The novel is split into two part: before “revelation” and after. The two parts felt like two different stories stylistically. The first part was a bit more coming-of-age story and I was curious where it was going. But I never quite felt invested in the story. I failed to understand Nathaniel, our protagonist. I never developed a connection with him, who seemed more like a means to tell the story than as a character in it. This is especially true in the second half as the story follows Nathaniel into adulthood, but never gives a clear picture of who Nathaniel is at this point. The story is painfully non-chronological, which is necessary for the storyline, but jarring for the reader. Further, Nathaniel as narrator becomes lost in the story. Suddenly, his story opens up to include details and perspectives he could not know. Have we switched to an omniscient narrator? Are these just possibilities Nathaniel is considering? It's not quite clear and this, along with a time line that's all over the place, makes for a novel that was not pleasurable to read.

And then there's all the espionage talk. Slog.

On a positive note, there are some wonderful scenes and finely crafted moments, particularly in the first half of the novel. I didn't care for Nathaniel as a character, but I did appreciate his relationship with Rachel, his relationship with The Darter and with Agnes. Nathaniel has a gentle and unique perspective of others, but this perspective doesn't translate to the larger story. The result is a rather dry narrative.

I'd expected more from my first real outing with Ondaatje, but I'll certainly return to the author. As for this novel, I wasn't impressed. The characters largely failed to pull me in and the plot wasn't strong enough to lift this plot-driven tale.