Divisadero

This aptly titled novel presents a fascinating series of character portraits of kind, well-intentioned people who expand the borders of family to include those orphaned and in need. Yet despite their honorable motivations, something always goes awry. Lush descriptions of people and landscapes quickly draw listeners in, although Ondaatje's flitting back and forth between characters combined with Hope Davis's narration, which remains the same throughout, sometimes makes it difficult to keep the voices straight. Listeners remain absorbed for more than half the novel, then begin to realize Ondaatje might be spreading himself too thin. While neat resolution is beside the point, characters we first identified with have been crowded out by less interesting voices, and even these are left hanging as the exit music begins. R.R. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

April 16, 2007
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost
and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient
, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.

July 30, 2007
Davis (American Splendor
) reads Ondaatje's puzzle of a novel delicately, as if hesitant to jostle a single piece out of place. Often playing emotionally frazzled characters on screen, Davis is far more understated here in offering up Ondaatje's hybrid narrative—one that goes from 1970s San Francisco to early 20th-century France, linking past and present with loose tendrils of memory and history. She does a fine job with the tricky French names and nomenclature, and puts her natural gifts as an actor to good use with her subtle, understated, well-oiled reading. Davis still sounds as no-nonsense as ever, but her skilled reading offers a good deal more patience and tenderness than her often-testy characters do. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 16).