N.a.v. recensie in de Volkskrant 8/9/18

A dark, mysterious, and mesmerizing audiobook with good narration and exquisite language. The first part of the story was perhaps a 4-star as it was slow-moving without an obvious plot. But it became a 5-star toward the end when certain mysteries were resolved. The story jumps around in time quite and bit, but not too much to follow.

This is my third Ondaatje book and I'd like to try some more.

Recommended! ( )

More and more I find that the most important books to me are the ones that show the nuance of emotion within the hidden narrative. Ondaatje is so damn good at this. This is a worthy successor to The English Patient, with perhaps The Cat's Table being part of the series as well.

I really enjoyed this book, and the conclusion that it came to. The coming of age story in a time of war, when things are not quite what they seem but as a teenager you don't have a view of the entire picture just quite yet. It takes time and perspective and work to put all the pieces together. At the time, it's seen through a dim light, and you can't make out all the details.

This book was beautiful. ( )

I found this storyline quite original in its perspective. Ondaatje has created quirky, enigmatic characters and surprising adventures for young Nathaniel and his sister Rachel. As readers we perceive some of what they don't realise in their naivety. ( )

I don't think I can rate this until I read it again; the closest I can come is to compare it to one of JMW Turner's depictions of something not clearly seen:

Michael Ondaatje writes beautifully. Characters with dimension, places I can see clearly through his prose. “Warlight” has all that. It also has a most intriguing first line, the mark of a great storyteller. Reeled me right in: “In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.” It took me three weeks to read this book of 285 pages, though, because I could put it down. It took me quite a while to become invested in the story that was being told. I enjoyed it, but did not love it. ( )

Growing up through the WWII blitz in England. It took me a bit of time to get into the story, and to get a sense of what was going on. I enjoyed Ondaatje's creative story telling and use of language. ( )

This beautifully written novel explores the impact of a British brother and sister abandoned by their parents during WW2. The mystery as to how and why makes this a compelling read. ( )

If you’re a fan of bildungsromans, then this book might be for you. As it turns out, that’s never been my cup of tea as a genre, despite some books using it more effectively than others. If you’re a fan of post-WWII fiction, then this book might also be for you; however, I would recommend that you check out Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen’s post-war fiction, Rose Macaulay, Barbara Pym, L.P. Hartley, et al., as their work is much more interesting, original, and less conventional than this novel.

Which leads me to the prose in Ondaatje’s Warlight: while there’s no doubt that he can write, and write very well, the prose here is very formulaic and suffers from relying too much on genre and caricature cliches—think a Dickensian novel done very quickly (à la Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, although that took her eleven years to write, so perhaps it’s a bad comparison here); think the punch-you-in-your-face allusions and repetitions in case you didn’t get them the first time around (e.g., Nathaniel and the echoes of Hoffmann’s “The Sand Man” or this novel’s The Moth Man and how many times the adjective “moth-like” is used to describe him).



While this is a compelling genre of two teenagers left alone just as peace hits post-Blitz London, and all of the attendant dangers and ominous moods that the city evokes during that time period (at which the novel excels quite well), the bifurcation of the narrative doesn’t mesh well with what seems to be Ondaatje’s point: namely, about memory and our (re)construction of our pasts, largely around chunks of absence. The first part of Warlight gets the story right, but the mood wrong; the second part gets the mood right—albeit with the stress falling in the wrong narrative place—but at the expense of what came before, if only to point to its seeming irrelevance.

With that said, this could very well be the book for you. Despite the bildungsroman red flag for this reader, I tackled it anyway, due to an immense interest in the time period and in the themes of memory and trauma. There’s too much plot here to prove the novel’s central point, though, and I might recommend this, as I said, for fans of Tartt, for fans of Dickens (but please go straight to the horse's mouth with him), or for those looking more for “popular” genre/historical fiction than those looking for literary fiction, as it so happened I was. ( )

Review to follow as part of the Man Booker panel on www.thereadersroom.org, but let's just say, I'm giving three stars because of the excellent use of the English language, but I really didn't enjoy this book much beyond the beautifully constructed sentences. Needlessly dull. And the parts that were the best were written by a character who somehow magically becomes omniscient.

***Update: my review***

I am a sucker for a beautifully constructed sentence, and Warlight has so so many of them. Unfortunately, the other aspects of the book failed to live up to the prose. It’s truly an example of overly controlled plotting. Where is the conflict? The emotion? There were two chapters where these were in evidence. The ending of the first half of the book culminated on a dramatic note, and I felt some hope that finally, at nearly halfway through, we were getting somewhere I wanted to go as a reader. But alas, no. It actually got more boring. The chapter that focuses on Rose and her relationship with Marsh was another high point, but oddly it is narrated by her son, Nathaniel, which in so far as I could tell had absolutely no way of knowing the story he relates. The whole book is from his point of view, and yet suddenly, he’s omniscient? Bottom line, this book took a terrific premise and made it as dull as possible. The only character I cared about, Rachel, was in scant evidence. I gave it 3 stars only because I did delight in the outstanding use of the English language. ( )

Cinematic in scope, the story is both engaging and evocative. It's hard to fathom how a married couple would have children and abandon them emotionally and physically while pursuing secretive careers. Of the many characters, both the Moth and the Darter as Rachel and Nathaniel's guardians stand out. Complex, inspirational and filled with stories, their presence in the lives of the two children was key. Told from Nathaniel's POV, as he matures, the emotional elements of loss, confusion and adventure are the constants. The story toggles from past to present like a metronome, it's rhythm keeping the reader engaged, while learning elements of their two guardians and parents' secretive lives. This being the first book I've read by this author, his visual approach and characters are reminiscent of screenplays. For those who enjoy historical fiction with a touch of mystery, this book is well worth the time. ( )

The first third was good, then there was a sudden jarring time shift and I should have listened to my gut instinct and abandoned the book right there. The last two thirds wandered around in circles, attempting to tie everything up, but it was so rambly and so full of convenient coincidences that I found the last two thirds of the book to be distinctly tedious. I ended up skimming the last 30 pages, just to get it over with. ( )

Set in the UK after WWII, protagonist Nathaniel tells the tale of being left in the care of an enigmatic person he calls The Moth while his parents leave the country to take care of undisclosed “business” in Singapore. Teens Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are supposed to go to boarding school, but they talk The Moth into living at home, where they are exposed to the clandestine activities of The Moth’s associates. An ex-boxer, The Darter, soon joins them. Nathaniel accompanies The Darter on trips down the Thames. Though he remains mostly in the dark, he suspects these trips involve illegal dealings.

The book is split into two parts. The first relates what happens to the two teens when their parents abandon them. The second takes place fourteen years later and follows Nathaniel’s attempts to reconstruct what was going on with his parents, particularly his mother, during and after the war. He understands more about the situation now that he is ten years older. The narrative sheds light on the aftermath of WWII, where many regional conflicts did not cease with the cease.

“On the continent guerrilla groups and Partisan fighters had emerged from hiding, refusing defeat. Fascist and German supporters were being hunted down by people who had suffered for five or more years. The retaliations and acts of revenge back and forth devastated small villages, leaving further grief in their wake. They were committed by as many sides as there were ethnic groups across the newly liberated map of Europe.”

Though it involves espionage, it is a reflective book involving little action. It is more about the impact of the parents’ espionage activities upon the children. The prose is stellar, as one may expect from Ondaatje. It worked for me as a way of depicting the pieces of a life that we puzzle out, never really knowing the entire picture but making inferences from what little we do know.

“The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out.”
( )

I was disappointed in this book; I felt like it should have been a short story. Two children, Nathaniel and Rachel, are told one day that their parents are going to Singapore for business, and that they are to stay behind, looked after by their boarder. They never return. The rest of their adolescence is spent living in a mystery, where they can't find out anything about their parents. I was frustrated with these characters: how could any mother leave her children like that? I left my younger daughter at home to start her school year when I crossed two states with my older daughter to attend my mother's funeral, and I can't forgive myself to this day. Probably because he's a man, ondaatje writes a mother character like this. There just wasn't much to this story. ( )

From reviews I know people either love or hate this book. I'm in the "loved it" camp.

I've read other Ondaatje books, and in my opinion he emphasizes atmosphere and character over action and dialogue. Knowing that going in, this book exceeded my expectations.

The story follows the life of Nathaniel, starting when he's 14 years old in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Both his parents suddenly depart - leaving him and his sister Rachel in the care of a nefarious seeming stranger they dub "The Moth". Other shady characters also make appearances in Nathaniel and Rachel's lives - "The Darter" and a variety of women.

Eventually we come to understand where the parents went and the real roles The Moth and The Darter play in the overall drama.

As I mentioned above, this book evokes a post-war England feeling. A bit surreal and only fully understood by the characters with hindsight many years in the future. ( )

Quirky and well-written, but it always seemed to leave me wanting more, ( )

I'm not sure how to describe the book. It is a coming of age story and a adult child's discovery of the past that he was unaware of at the time. The story hits the most exciting point in the middle. It is a slow work up and then a slow march back down. It is beautifully written but it just wasn't for me. ( )

I spent most of the first half of the book hoping they'd switch narrators and just tell the mother's story, and then when we sort of got a glimpse into her wartime adventures I was SO BORED. The reveal at the end was...not nearly as interesting/dramatic/sad as I was expecting, as I got closer and closer to the end. I usually love books about WWII! This was too boring. ( )

Beautifully descriptive stories of eccentrics, rebels, and nonconformists drifting in and out of somber, moody scenery.
I loved this book. It was refreshingly unique, aesthetically melancholic, with a number of fiercely independent and intelligent women characters. ( )

I’m not sure I can claim to have read this book very well - one of my first attempts at an audio book - but it’s 2 1/2 stars from me. I found this quite uninteresting, despite its potentially interesting subject matter (WW2 espionage in England). Nothing much happens - a man recounts his childhood and tries to piece together his mother’s work as a spy. Perhaps it was the narration, which I didn’t feel ‘matched’ the story - a bit dreary and uninspiring. The narrator’s attempt to speak in a female voice particularly irritated me. ( )

I wish we could hear more from Rose on the choices she made i.e. why she entered the world of intelligence at the risk of sacrificing her family. We don't even know how she died aside from an oblique reference that the glass pane was shattered, and we have to be satisfied with the fragments that Nathaniel picked up and patched with his imagination. Nathaniel cuts a melancholy figure at the end of the book, trying to survive with 'barely held stories', and 'gathering what was invisible and unspoken', 'sewing it all together in order to survive'. Rereading this, he is just doing what many of us do - using our imagination to try to understand the situation. It is an essential survival tool, or we will drown in melancholy or pity. ( )

Shortly after the end of WWII, Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are left in the care of a family friend when their parents travel to Asia for work. But their caretaker has a strange circle of friends with varying levels of criminality that draws in the siblings in different ways. Both at that time and over a decade later, Nathaniel tries to reconstruct what was truly happening around him and how it has made him the man he is.

I often find Ondaatje a challenging reading experience and Warlight was no exception. The narrative meanders like the rivers that Nathaniel spends time traveling and the line between his memories and his conjectures are fuzzy. While he explores how blind Nathaniel is to everything around him in the narcissistic way of many teens, he leaves tantalizing hints of who the other people who surround the protagonist might truly be. An excellent book club pick, I recognize Ondaatje's skill but while the read was interesting I didn't find it particularly enjoyable. ( )

As Nathaniel reflects and remembers his childhood, he learns surprising things about his mother, her associates and his own life. A thought-provoking story that makes you think about honesty, love and childhood. ( )

This was so beautifully written it was similar to reading a book of poetry. There were times of confusion but I understand why Ondaatje did it. He wanted the reader to feel what it was like to live in London during and immediately after WW 2. He succeeded. I don't provide an overview of the plot, suffice it to say if you like books set around WW 2 with strong female characters, this is your book. ( )

The last book by Michael Ondaatje that I read in its entirety was The English Patient, which to my great surprise, was written 26 years ago. I have tried to read a couple of his other works published in the interim, namely Anil’s Ghost, and may have flipped through The Cat’s Table in a bookstore. However, neither had felt very memorable.

Warlight, Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years, is set in the years immediately following the WWII in London, and the story expands to other neighboring towns as well as the years that follow. The story was captivating at times, reading like a thriller with dark undertones and vivid action; but at certain parts, the prose slows down considerably, and my mind can’t help but start to wander.

I still consider Ondaatje quite a solid storyteller, particularly when it comes to wartime stories. In that respect, it’s a worthy read, as Warlight is a story (or rather a series of intertwining stories) well told.
( )