Consequences of Peace

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

From Goodreads: “It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz and years of war. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and both grow more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women with a shared history, all of whom seem determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time, and it is this journey – through reality, recollection, and imagination – that is told in this magnificent novel.”


Anyone who has been following my blog knows that Ondaatje is my favorite author, so a new novel by him is always something I’m on the lookout for. In fact, the minute I knew this book was coming out, I pre-ordered a print copy. However, when Edelweiss let me ask for an ARC, and then approved my request, I was surprised, and of course, thrilled (and no, I didn’t cancel my order for the print book; it is, after all Ondaatje). What makes Ondaatje my favorite isn’t always the stories he tells, but how he tells them. In fact, sometimes Ondaatje can be confusing in his story telling, but even when things don’t make perfect sense, his prose is always so exquisite that it doesn’t matter. Goodreads also said about this book “In a narrative as mysterious as memory itself – at once both shadowed and luminous – Warlight is a vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire.” Yeah… ‘luminous’ is a very good word for what Ondaatje gives us, and he does succeed in giving it to us every time.

Rather than continue to be effusive about how Ondaatje writes (and you know I could go on endlessly), I think I should concentrate on the story, which is told mostly from the narrator’s point of view, that being Nathaniel. I should note that in this book, Ondaatje moves between first and third person, where you get the feeling that Nathaniel is also narrating the third person sections, while at the same time, taking an omnipresent viewpoint. I know that doesn’t sound like it makes any sense, but if you think of it as the ‘imagination’ part noted above from the Goodreads blurb, I think you’ll understand what I mean here. My thinking is that Ondaatje needed the first-person parts to draw the reader in, and make them sympathetic to Nathaniel, but that viewpoint doesn’t allow for the wider picture of things that happened beyond Nathaniel’s own experiences; to include those events, he allows Nathaniel to imagine them from a distance, in both time and through piecing together clues he finds.

What this does is give us a very layered story, wherein Ondaatje starts with Nathaniel as a young teenager, and builds on this time in a mostly chronological order. Ondaatje then moves to Nathaniel as a young man, and this is where he introduces the third person/imagination sections of the story. These passages help Nathaniel fill in the blanks of his own life, but more importantly, he also learns more about his mother’s life, and what really happened to her when she disappeared from his life. All the other characters seem to dance on the sidelines of Nathaniel’s life, until their presence is necessary to add something to the story, and only then they can take center stage for a time. I found this fascinating in how it seemed to say that although you might sometimes feel that certain people have no significant impact on your life, in fact, there are no real minor characters, you just don’t always understand their importance at the time.

However, I don’t think that was the main point of this book, although for me it was a substantial part. If I had to pinpoint what I think Ondaatje is saying here, I’d say that we must look at the title of the book and attempt to understand its significance. For those who read this book the word “warlight” only appears near the end of the novel when Ondaatje talks about how the British helped barges find their way on the Thames when they transported munitions during the war. What this says to me is that this story is more about Nathanial finding his way, than who or what was helping or hindering him along his path. If that means it is a “coming of age” story, then so be it, and I can’t think of one more beautifully written than this. On the other hand, there was one phrase that Ondaatje used which I think may be even more significant in understanding what this book is about, and that’s the one I used as the title of this review – the consequences of peace. That simple combination of words is so powerful and evocative for me, that I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it for a very long time, if only because it is an impeccable example of how amazing a writer Ondaatje proves to be, time and again.

That only leaves the question if this book has overtaken “The English Patient” and “The Cat’s Table” as my favorite of Ondaatje’s works, and I must be honest and say no – those two are still my favorites. However, if until now I ranked “Anil’s Ghost” as just below those two, I believe that this book has edged that novel out, but only by a just a whisper. Of course, this means I must give it a full five stars, and you know I’m recommending it wholeheartedly (as if you expected anything less).

Knopf/Penguin Random House will release "Warlight" by Michael Ondaatje on May 8, 2018. This book is available (pre-order) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, Kobo audio books, eBooks, iTunes (iBook UK or iBook US), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books as well as from an IndieBound store near you. I would like to thank the publishers for allowing me an ARC copy of this novel via Edelweiss in exchange for a fair review.

You can find my reviews of other Ondaatje books here:
Anil’s Ghost
The Cat’s Table
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Coming Through Slaughter
Divisadero
Running in the Family

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Music and Silence

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

“In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.”

Barnes’ latest novel is a fictional documentation of the life of the Russian composer, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, who lived under both the Bolshevik and Communist regimes of the USSR, until his death in 1975. Shostakovich was at turns both adored and reviled by both his country’s people and leadership, and much of his music reflects this push-pull of acceptance and rejection. But what his life was like across all those years, and if he was a dissident or a loyal Communist party member, has mostly been left to conjecture and interpretation, and Barnes attempts to find his own answers to these contentions with this book.


I must admit that Barnes is, for me, somewhat of an enigma as an author. Several years ago, I read his Booker Prize winning novel, The Sense of an Ending, and to tell the truth, I’m not totally sure what it was about (which is probably why I never wrote a full review). While I can remember very little about that novel, I’m having a completely different feeling about this book. On the one hand, Barnes writes with a blank prose style that initially feels cold and unfeeling, but slowly grows on you. This style also tries its best to hide a very dry sense of humor that sneaks up on you at some of the strangest times. With this, Barnes includes some interesting, but obviously typically Russian idiosyncrasies into his story telling, which lend a high level of authenticity. Together, all this makes Shostakovich into a very sympathetic character, and the reader only hopes hope that Barnes got him right.

On the other hand, Barnes introduces a kind of “non-character” in the form of what he calls Power (yes, with a capital P), which has somewhat human qualities, but is more of a representation of the type of external forces that Shostakovich lived through. This sounds confusing, and I have to say that there were times when I was confused by his usage of this amorphous thing that seemed to sit at the center of Shostakovich’s life, which he struggled with as well as struggled against. Of course, the other thing at the center of Shostakovich’s life was his art, which was in his case, his music, that went in and out of favor with Power.

The question that then comes to mind, is what relevance does this have today? Why would Barnes write this novel now? Personally, I’m not certain, but if I'm to hazard a guess, it might have something to do with understanding what art can do to influence power, and if it even deserves to have any influence at all. Regarding the political arena, these days we constantly hear the discussions about whether artists (among other non-political personas) should speak their minds or not, and then we see people on both sides of the argument either denigrating or praising their choices to do one or the other. Of course, soviet Russia was as far from being a bastion of free speech as possible (nor is it today), making these reactions part and parcel of the privilege of living in a society that (at least technically) upholds this democratic value. If Barnes is trying to tell us that we need to celebrate the fact that despite all its faults, the ability to speak truth to power is something we should treasure, then maybe he made a very good point. He certainly shows us through this novel how not having that freedom can be debilitating, both artistically and emotionally.

Of course, I could be totally off base about this, and perhaps Barnes just decided to look at a beloved composer, and muse about his world and life. In either case, I certainly found this book far more approachable (and memorable) than The Sense of an Ending and I truly enjoyed reading about a composer I know so little about. For this, I think I can recommend this novel, but because I’m still unsure of what Barnes is trying to say here, I’m going to give it four out of five stars (which is still a pretty good rating from me).

“The Noise of Time” by Julian Barnes is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, Kobo audio books, eBooks, iTunes (iBook or audiobook), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books as well as from an IndieBound store near you.

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Shards of Remaining Objects

Smash All the Windows by Jane Davis

Goodreads Synopsis: “For the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances. Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unraveled and hypocrisies exposed, they can all get back to their lives. If only it were that simple.”


It certainly is a bit of a coincidence for me that Jane Davis’ latest novel focuses on families of victims of a contemporary, fictional disaster, when the last book I read (On a Cold Dark Sea by Elizabeth Blackwell) also had to do with survivors, albeit of a historically true disaster. Both books look back at their respective tragedies through the perspective of time, and both dredge up the painful memories of the events. Also, in both books, one character finds themselves in the unique situation where they can connect the dots, as well as others involved. However, that is where almost all the similarities between them seem to end. In Blackwell’s case, it is the survivor journalist who pulls the other survivors together. In Davis’ novel, we have the husband of one of the victims who has been creating art out of the pain the incident caused him. When he is given the opportunity to show his works at the Tate Modern, he decides to offer the loved ones of others who died to contribute to his exhibition. Into this mix Davis also brings two people who were students reading the law at the time of the accident, who, despite having no real personal connection to the incident, end up helping prove that the victims were not to blame.

Through this, Davis builds up not only portraits of some of those who died, but also what the lives of these people are like because these loved ones are now gone. But it is more than just this, really. Davis also uses the exhibition and the artist to connect these people together in a way that goes far beyond their mutual losses and opening their old wounds. You could almost say that these characters end up with very special type of camaraderie that doesn’t require them to be in constant contact with each other; call it an invisible bond, if you will. That the two students get woven into this fabric, only amplifies the concept that I think Davis was aiming at, that being that in situations like this, the victims of such a tragedy aren’t just the dead, or the injured, or even those who were families or even friends of the victims. The art exhibition, of course, is what really pulls this all together in this; not only are the people with direct contact with those who died effected by such an incident, but also those who have no connection to either the event or the people involved. This is an extremely powerful message, particularly today, when we are witness to so many tragic events every day.

With this, Davis brings again her deceptively simple language that captures the reader from the very start. Davis has a way of subtly developing each character, which ultimately endear them to her readers. This is enhanced by the story line, which Davis builds through mostly chronological chapters, interspersed with scenes of relevant characters from just prior to the accident, which help increase the tension that builds until the opening of the exhibition. Aside from this, I have to say that Davis not only builds her plot with almost surgical precision, but she also seems to have an extensive grasp on highly effective modern art and how it can have an emotional impact on an audience. I can tell you right now that if there actually was a real exhibit at the Tate Modern like the one Davis invents for us here, I’d make sure to go see it the next time I visited London, because although it sounds frightening, it also sounds amazing.

There were, however, two things that didn’t sit completely right with me in this book. One of these was the death of the London Underground employee who was the supervisor at the station where the incident occurred. Davis never tells us exactly what happened to her, leaving it to our imaginations, but I think that while we can probably assume how she died, I don’t think Davis gives us enough about her to totally understand it (sorry to be cryptic, but anything more would include a spoiler). The other aspect was regarding the victim who remained unidentified. While Davis gives us a poignant scene about this unknown person at the opening of the exhibition, I think it might have been even more emotional for the reader if she had added a few more references to him throughout the book, even while she kept his identity a mystery. Despite this, Davis still had me welling up a couple of times and finally evoking real tears near the conclusion of the book. For all of this, I certainly highly recommend this book and I think it deserves a very healthy four and a half stars out of five.

Rossdale Print Productions released "Smash all the Windows" by Jane Davis on April 12, 2018. This book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, iTunes, The Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery), as well as new or used from Alibris. I would like to thank Jane Davis for sending me an ARC of her novel in exchange for a fair review.

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