NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Intricate in its writing, lyrical and quite moving. Nominated for several awards in Canada.

Ondaatje writes from a deep inkwell of poetry. Every sentence exhudes genius, beauty and honesty.

The novel is a kind of artistic summary and conclusion of motifs and subjects of all former novels by the prolific Canadian author, it is brilliantly written in a post modernistic manner.

A gracefully written story about escape, shadows of the past and how only art can recreate a life and a world.

This complex and exquisitely written novel explores the connections, parallels and divisions between the lives of three people in the same family and a novelist from a century earlier.

Ondaatje is a master, if the characters don’t draw you in then the sheer poetry of his writing will. The book’s structure is unique and plays on themes, the ripple of time, cause and effec,t all subtly connected but not necessarily resolved.

In his conjuring and sensitive writing Ondaatje describes a tragical family saga. In his almost surrealistic art of narration, he masterly transposes elements of the plot into the formal and dramaturgical structure of the novel.

With Ondaatjes language that has no equivalent competition in its poetic and unique beauty he tells a family drama that is as fascinating and absorbing as it is complex and disturbing.

Interestingly constructed novel with a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes and reflections across time and place.