Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje

I’ve just finished reading the ARC of Michael Ondaatje’s extraordinary new novel Divisadero, which will be published in May. The book begins with a harrowing familial violence on a farm in Petaluma and ends in another country at another time. San Francisco residents will recognize the title, which is the street where the novel’s overriding consciousness, Anna, lives as an adult. I say “overriding consciousness” because, while Anna narrates some portions of the novel, there are also large swaths of omniscience, as well as points at which the omniscient narrator collides, unexpectedly, with Anna’s voice.

Years after the violence that shatters her family, Anna moves to France to temporarily inhabit the home of Lucien Seguro, a famous French poet. After a detailed and arresting account of the lives of Anna, her sister Claire, their father, and a cardsharp named Coop who was raised alongside the two girls, the novel’s focus shifts to Lucien: his upbringing in the French countryside, his affection for a neighbor woman, Marie-Neige, and her husband Roman, his childhood. Slowly and brilliantly, these stories intersect, held together by a man named Rafael, who becomes Anna’s lover in France.

This is a story about orphans, and about events that drastically alter the landscape of family. It is a patient, gentle book. Ondaatje writes truthfully and unflinchingly about desire. One of the most memorable aspects of the novel is his portrayal of parent-child relationships, particularly between mothers and sons.

The character of Lucien Seguro provides the author with room to write about the act of writing. Reading some of these passages, one can’t help but wonder whether Lucien serves as a vehicle and repository for some of Ondaatje’s own writerly musings. Even minor characters, such as a woman named Ruth whom Coop stays with for a short time, offer some insights into the writing life. Here, Ruth quotes a radio interview she heard with William Styron:

Then, at some point during is excuse for not saying what he was doing, he said, “You know, I think I have already written the most intimate and profound book I will ever be able to write. I don’t think I can go as far as that again. From now on I should try comedy. Comedy is not easy, but at least it is not the same road.” I read everything of his after that, but of course there was never to be a comedy. And of course you can’t go back again.

It is almost impossible to resist the urge to compare a writer’s new novel to earlier work. Some passages here, in which a young Lucien Seguro is hallucinatory and near death during a stint in the army, echo the themes and atmosphere of The English Patient. And like that earlier novel, desire is so raw on the page as to be painful, but at the same time beautiful. Admirers of The English Patient might have wondered if Ondaatje had it in him to write another book as “intimate and profound.” With Divisadero, he has achieved, once again, intimacy and profundity.