very different sort of coming of age story, with the most dramatic first sentence to entice you into this world,
. Post war, bombed out London, Nathaniel and Ruth. . teenage brother and sister left in the care of a man called “The Moth” a shady character, while their parents go away
to Singapore,
A mysterious tale that is full of adventure, . and secrets that Nathaniel becomes aware of as he ages,
My first Michael Ondaatje novel, Will be reading more of him! Warlight is a coming of age, in depth character story, People come and go through Nathaniel and Rachels lives, like ocean waves, In, out. Itsand in a weird twist, their parents have left for Singapore leaving these two teenagers in the hands of a friend nicknamed “The Moth”, His friends, many of whom seem to have shady, nefarious lives, take the kids under their wings, As The Moth tells the kids at one point, these folks had permission to do things during the war that would be considered sketchy at other times.
Not all were able to adjust back,
Dont go into this expecting a fast paced story, It meanders, introducing us to these odd characters, As the book progresses, Nathaniel takes a job that allows him to research their mothers life during the war, And he learns more about that cast of characters that kept Rachel and him safe, I felt I learned more about aspects of the time during and after WWII,
The story is told primarily from Nathaniels POV, There were things about Rachels life that were hinted at that were never answered because of this,
This is a sad, somewhat haunting story, My feelings toward Rose went back and forth,
I listened to this book, which probably wasnt the best medium, It wasnt that Steve West was a bad narrator, It was more that it was hard to stay focused on a story that was this dense and slow moving, The narrator is a sixteen yearold boy, at the start, He has an older sister, The Second World War has just ended, But there are, you know, loose ends, His parents say they must go to Singapore, and quickly, Business. No need to disrupt the children's school, They'll be reunited soon.
But parents lie,
Before they learn the truth they learn avuncular lessons,
A woman takes them into the woods in the dark, and speaks as a poem, or song: "It's a warm evening, . . and the pitch of the crickets is in D, They have a sweet whistle, but it's made of the rub of their wings, not by breath, and this much conversation means there will be rain, That's why it's so dark now, the clouds are between us and the moon, Listen. "
And this from their primary guardian:
Mahler put the word schwer beside certain passages in his musical scores, Meaning "difficult. " "Heavy. " We were told this at some point by The Moth, as if it was a warning, He said we needed to prepare for such moments in order to deal with them efficiently, in case we suddenly had to take control of our wits.
Those times exist for all of us, he kept saying, Just as no one relies on only one pitch or level of effort from musicians in the orchestra, Sometimes it relies on silence, It was a strange warning to be given, to accept that nothing was safe anymore, "'Schwer,'" he'd say, with his fingers gesturing the inverted commas, and we'd mouth the word and then the translation, or simply nod in weary recognition.
My sister and I got used to parroting the word back to each other"schwer, "
There will be many schwer moments, And a gradual reconstruction of facts, Ondaatje takes his time. Our narrator will be reminded of a song he heard once or twice a week at home: Schumann's Mein Herz ist schwer, You may know the song, usually played as a lieder with piano accompaniment, I have tried my best to like Lieder but have mostly failed, Then I found a transcription where a viola takes the voice's place: sitelink youtube. com/watchvgIT
Much better, if you want to feel the sorrow in this book, And, see the comments below about the weird connections in a reading journey,
If a wound is great you cannot turn it into something that is spoken, it can barely be written, There must be a word for a statement that is refuted by its very utterance,
When I started reading this I chanced upon this thought on some social media site: Few items are made from paper and the best poetry isn't written on them.
A call to helping arms, But not true. Because this is the best poetry,
I do not need to know the color of hair or what shape the ears, Tell me who the character is,
He had a river body that showed accent only on land,
and
She thrilled to open spaces and weather nights,
and do not elaborate beyond this when a child asks his mother:
"What did you do that was so terrible"
"My sins are various.
"
I closed this book, thinking as the narrator did:
We are foolish as teenagers, But above all, most of all, how much damage did I do
This is a special book, for both the audio and print editions
“, . . the war years when blackouts and curfews had been in effect, when there was just warlight and only blind barges were allowed to move along this stretch of river.
”
London,. So much of life is happening in the shadows that young Nathaniel is having a hard time figuring out what or whom to believe, He relates the story, sometimes firsthand accounts and sometimes piecedtogether information hes pick up or eventually researched,
“l was fourteen at the time, and Rachel nearly sixteen, and they told us we would be looked after in the holidays by a guardian, as our mother called him.
. . Rachel had already told me she suspected he worked as a criminal, ”
His name is Walter, but the kids nickname him The Moth and remain suspicious of him, particularly since he knows nothing about children or cooking, and his friends seem to be as questionable and dodgy as he is.
Some float in and out of the story, but Norman, aka The Pimlico Darter he was a welterweight boxer becomes a permanent fixture,
Why do they need a guardian Its the War Years, and kids are expected to accept, When their mother says their father is being transferred to Asia for a while and she is packing to join him, why would they doubt her They help her pack, and the long time she takes to decide what she needs, the more Nat wonders whats going on.
“Our mother was about to be altered, She would evolve into something invisible to us, Perhaps for Rachel it felt different, She was more than a year elder, It may have looked theatrical to her, But for me the act of continual reconsidering and repacking suggested a permanent disappearance, ”
Again, its the War Years, and people have been on the move, doing unusual things which they dont explain to children, Its unsettling, but the Moth sends the kids off to boarding school, which solves all of his guardianship problems, He hasnt reckoned with their resourcefulness, The kids escape school, scarper off home, and find themselves becoming part of the colourful population that comes and goes from “Walters house”, as the Darter refers to it.
That is also a little unsettling,
When the Moth is away, the Darter takes them out in the dead of night on road trips to pick up what are presumably illegally imported greyhounds.
“ while Rachel and I and sometimes three greyhounds squabbled in the back on the way to Whitechapel, We were not even certain that the dogs belonged to him,
Was this even his car I wondered, for I noticed the number plates on the blue Morris were frequently changed, But The Moth was content to move in The Darters slipstream, Shy people are drawn to such types for camouflage, In any ease, the tensions we felt whenever The Moth left home were the result not of our guardians absence but of the knowledge that The Darter had permission to oversee us with that grudging, uninterested concern.
”
We also discover the world of the barges that travel up and down all the rivers of England, again in the dead of night.
Nat and Rachel help load and carry whatever it is with the Darter and enjoy the relative freedom of movement,
“ during the Blitz, when there was just warlight, the river dark save for one dimmed orange light on bridges to mark the working arch for water traffic, a quiet signal in the midst of the bombing, and the barges ablaze, and shrapnel frapping across the water.
. . ”
This is a story of dark and shadows with occasional glimpses of truth, the same way that when lightning flashes during the darkest storm you get the briefest, blinding, terrifying look at everything around.
If you get a few flashes in a row, you might find your way, Such were the London nights ofthe brief lights of war, the flashes of bombs, the dim light on a bridge arch,
“There are times when I want to place those moments when we were in the cuts and canals north of the Thames into other hands, in order to understand what was happening to us.
I had lived a mostly harboured life, Now, cut loose by my parents, I was consuming everything around me, Whatever our mother was doing and wherever she was, I was strangely content, Even though things were being kept from us, ”
Between the stories from their youth, Nat speaks of stories from his mothers youth, particularly about a time when she was very young and a family of thatchers was working on her familys roof.
The youngest boy falls off and is put to bed in his mothers house, where she is assigned at the age of eight! to look after him.
Do we need to know this Yes indeed, but much later, and its another fascinating piece of Nats puzzle,
When hes fifteen, he falls in love with a wild child who calls herself Agnes Street, the name of the place where they have their first romantic rendezvous in a vacant house for sale.
He begins to find his own feet, but we see less and less of Rachel,
“Agnes of World's End, Of Agnes Street, of Mill Hill, and Limeburner's Yard where she had lost that cocktail dress, I knew even then I needed to keep this part of my life away from The Darter and The Moth, Theirs was the world l was living in after my parents disappeared, And the world of Agnes was where I now escaped to alone, ”
As an adult wading through the archives, Nat unexpectedly finds how deeply he
and his sister were embroiled in the war themselves, which brings the book to a most satisfying conclusion.
Im not saying all questions are answered, but at least I feel I understand why they cant be,
Ondaatje is well known as a terrific writer, and no wonder, This is a totally absorbing book, and I loved it,
I enjoyed both the epub edition and the Audible audio narrated by George Blagden, who had just the right tone for the characters and the times.
.