About this deal
This is a political novel that encompasses the frenetic construction of Toronto, the harsh winters and glorious summers of the Ontario countryside, the universal struggles of immigrants in a new world; above all it is 200 pages of absolutely sublime writing that somehow captures the pace and the thrill of pivotal moments both in history and in our lives. I had hooped to read about the development and growth of Toronto but feel that I am really none the wiser. The viaduct was to be a double-decked truss arched bridge, carrying water, electricity and traffic and linking eastern Toronto with the city center. Through fragmented stories and evocative memories, In the Skin of a Lion recounts the story of its protagonist, Patrick Lewis, and his experiences as a member of the Canadian working class.
No mention is made of the size of her wimple or the ballooning of her skirts, but it must be her clothes that catch the wind. Bought for madame because I heard about it on Radio 4, it sounded great and I thought she might like it. Devi draws on Ondaatje's use of converging narratives to uncover the vastly different experiences of immigrants in Canada, and symbolize the overarching issue of how their unofficial history is erased from the official histories. The most recent replacement looks much too slight to contain the book I read in my 20s - and in fact it does read long, the prose is delicious and slow. I don't know if I can boast of reading it as soon as it was published, in the spring of 1987, though when I think of the book I also think of that time of my life: sitting in an evil little breeze-block room in the student residences at the University of East Anglia, with a view of other evil little breeze-block rooms.In the water works that Commissioner Harris embarks upon after the bridge is completed, "The brass railings curved up three flights like an immaculate fiction. Ondaatje uncovers the story of those whose labour created Toronto landmarks in the early twentieth century, deftly knitting up truth and myth, revealing the lives of those who were forgotten in the official version of history. The hero of the book is Patrick Lewis, an explosives expert who nurses a broken heart among the immigrant Macedonians and Finns. We learn of events that were in the news while the bridge was being built—the fall of a nun from the as yet incomplete bridge, the disappearance of Ambrose Small (a bigwig theater owner), labor union meetings and the murder of labor union activists. Ondaatje is much praised for the way he "decentres" history, but it was not this that held me, 20 years ago; it was the way he "decentres" sexual relations.
He is elemental, like Graham Greene, and speaks of action with such a precise use of his poetics (The English Patient is--gasp--a smaller pleasure, than this! Through this story, Patrick discovers that the anonymous loggers he knew in his youth were Finnish immigrants. When Clara asks who the young girl is who answered the phone, Patrick initially fails to define his relationship but ultimately tells Clara that Hana is his daughter. Exhausted, Patrick falls asleep, and in the morning Harris asks the police to defuse the bombs and bring a nurse for Patrick.
In this way, the typical dynamic of immigration is reversed: even though immigrants are traditionally told to integrate into Canadian society, Patrick finds that he is the one who needs to adapt to his foreign neighbors and absorb their customs if he wants to fit in. In the beginning of the book Michael Ondaatje creates a stunning sense of place in the once wildness of Canada. This is not about fidelity or infidelity so much as about the impossibility of knowing someone, let alone owning them - though it is possible to love them, all the same. Diogenes is quoted at the climax of the third act, "[i]n a rich man's house there is nowhere to spit except in his face. The narrative then shifts briefly to Caravaggio’s story, describing him as an adventurous, charismatic thief specialized in stealing paintings.
Patrick is enraged by her death, and because Alice always believed that the rich exploited the poor laborers, he leaves Hana with Nicholas and goes to avenge Alice’s death by bombing the Muskoka Hotel, a place frequented by the wealthy of Toronto. When they go to Clara’s friend Alice Gull’s country house for a few days, Patrick learns more about Clara’s past life, and in particular her erotic anecdotes, but he feels that a part of her will always remain out of his reach. He thus learns that Nicholas Temelcoff, the baker whom Hana is friends with, was once a worker on the Bloor Street Viaduct. It is the 1920s, and Patrick Lewis has arrived in the bustling city of Toronto, leaving behind his Canadian wilderness home.Temelcoff is a silent man who struggles with English yet they are able to transcend their social and language barriers through the commonality of their scars— his from work, hers from being "always unlucky. I find this author difficult as I am never sure what the point of the stories are and this book was the same. It’s not a case of a book failing to live up to its hype; rather, I feel unable to judge effectively whether it did or didn’t do that.
In 1992 he received the Man Booker Prize for his winning novel adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film, The English Patient. Patrick Lewis, the protagonist and professional dynamiter loves passionately but all his loves are unrequited. Some passages I found intriguing--notably the ones about the workers building the viaduct, tunneling under Lake Ontario, and laboring in the tannery--Ondaatje has a knack for describing the dirtiest and most dangerous sorts of work and helping the reader understand what it is like. Patrick says he will tell Hana on the drive who Clara is, and more stories of his and her mother’s life. The nun vanishes the next day, transforming her habit into a dress and entering ordinary civilian life.
In the Kingston Penitentiary, Patrick and two other prisoners, Buck and Caravaggio, are painting the roof. I used to think I wasn't clever enough for Booker winners, and now I just think that Bookers tend to prioritize recursive, thematic novels without a lot of aggressive external structure, and I, a straightforward creature, love an aggressive external structure. Having read Ondaatje's Running In The Family (and much enjoyed it) several years ago, this was his first novel I have consumed and, to be honest, found it difficult going in parts. Patrick seems to do things, once in a while, including some fairly risky actions with explosives, but I was too disengaged to be able to speak intelligently about why he might have done this. Although Patrick succeeds in entering the heavily guarded building, he fails to make his dynamite explode.