(This is the third in a series of reviews leading up to the Miami Book Fair taking place at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus, set this year for Nov. 11 through 18, 2018).
"Warlight," by Michael Ondaatje, Knopf, $26.95
This is a book about secrets. Secrets and those who keep them, even to the death. It is masterfully written and a worthy successor to Ondaatje’s earlier classic, "The English Patient." That was about secrets, too. And memory. And trying to make a whole out of disparate, elusive parts.
Set in postwar England, it centers upon a young man, Nathaniel, the narrator of this tale, who is trying to make sense of what happened to him and his sister Rachel, when their parents left them in the care of strangers. “Only for a year”, his mother, Rose, tells them as she carefully folds and packs a large steamer trunk with clothing and other necessities. His father, the most elusive of parents, simply disappears “to Asia” – Rose tells them -- and is never heard from again.
Rose will reappear later in their lives, but what she did, during and in the aftermath of World War II, is not anything she will ever elucidate to her children, much less to anyone else. Secrets. Shadows. Murkiness. When, much later, Nathaniel tries to glean what she did, asking, “What did you do that was so terrible?” she simply and unsatisfactorily replies, in great sadness, “My sins are various.”
Few things can be more terrifying than being abandoned as children by one’s parents. Although Rose places a responsible caretaker in her place, in their home, a man the children dub The Moth, they are puzzled by the many strangers who visit and also sometimes come to stay. They are mysterious, none more so than the enigmatic man Rachel and Nathaniel dub The Darter, who takes them on mysterious rides up and down the Thames, smuggling greyhounds to dog tracks as well as dubious things in boxes for Waltham Abbey. Nathaniel’s girlfriend, Agnes – whom he meets as a young teenager in a restaurant where he’s working part-time – also partakes of these river journeys.
Michael Ondaatje. Photo Credit: Daniel Mordzinski
A horrifying incident occurs that changes the siblings’ lives forever” and the rest of the novel is devoted to Nathaniel trying to make sense of it all. What he does discover, finally, is that his parents were working for the Foreign Office as spies. Rose, “gathered” to the service by the most surprising of recruiters, a young man from her home village in Suffolk, gains notoriety as a broadcaster given the name Viola. In that capacity, her sins were indeed “various”, and marked her for extermination.
As Nathaniel delves through official documents that he accesses and pieces together trying to discover who his mother and her cohorts – The Moth, The Darter, Marsh Felon, Andrew McCash, Olive Lawrence, et al. – really are, he is appalled and distraught. His sister Rachel, is outraged and will have nothing more to do with Rose, declaring that she “hates her”, and later will cut off all ties with her brother, as well. In trying so hard to protect her children, Rose has confused, isolated, and sadly pretty much destroyed them. It’s a story that will break the reader’s heart.
So, why read it?
Because it’s beautifully written, for starters, a story with tight plotting that slowly unfolds and holds together, and it rings so true. Ondaatje is a masterful storyteller and he makes the reader care about all of his characters and what happens to them. It made me think, in a way, of the kind of storytelling Charles Dickens excelled at and the unforgettable characters he created, though Nathaniel is by no means either Pip nor Oliver Twist and Ondaatje is not Dickens. But Nathaniel will stick with you, just as Dickens’ characters do.And so will the tragic Rose.
"If you are the kind of reader who appreciates fine writing and the plight of a sympathetic protagonist surrounded by shadows and mysterious goings-on, will speak to you. But, be warned, this is a challenging read and "Warlight" takes no prisoners.
"Warlight" is the ambient light that helped to guide people during the blackouts in England during the blitz in World War II. The light isn’t that clear, and is meant to guide, not to illuminate.
Michael Ondaatje appears Saturday, Nov. 17 at 11:30 a.m., Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor, Room 1261), 300 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33132. Miami Book Fair at MDC's Wolfson Campus, 3000 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami. Get tickets and information at www.miamibookfair.com, or call 305-237-3528 or email bookfair@mdc.edu.
