NATIONAL BEST SELLERFrom the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory … mysterious as memory itself–shadowed and luminous at once–we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings’ mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn’t know and understand in that time, and it is this journey–through facts, recollection, and imagination–that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.
more
I adored Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. Written in the same lyrical, complex and utterly enthralling style as The English Patient, it is a story of self-discovery set in post WWII London that will stay with me for some time.
This is my first Michael Ondaatje, and what a book to start with. I loved it! WWII is the background to the action in this novel. There is abandonment, intrigue, mystery, family, friends, enemies, spies, and a grown man’s attempt at making sense of his teenage years right after the war. It’s the language of the book that will draw you in, the poetry in the words. I couldn’t put it down!
Beautiful prose. This book stays with you long after you’ve turned its last page. It moves at a pace that makes you feel you’re trailing your fingers through the water behind a drifting boat.
This book was terrible! I love books set in London during WWII or related to that time period, but this was a huge disappointment! It didn’t follow a normal narrative arc, and instead of a cohesive plot, it was just a bunch of boring vignettes with a multitude of characters, most of whom are not fully developed. And there really wasn’t any adequate resolution in the end. Total waste of time!
In a lot of ways, this is a very confusing novel. Like it’s title, a made-up/non word, it draws you in but then very slowly rotates the rug you’re standing on. To read it expecting the traditional tropes of a novel is to court disappointment. The novel has a much greater agenda, almost a meta-text of what an author does to write. So, it’s almost a how-to book. In this sense, the title makes sense, that the process of writing is a war and it needs light shed on it. I really, really enjoyed it.
Author Michael Ondaatje portrays the verisimilitudes of childhood memories and the conflicting needs of adults in a politically fraught time. Warlight is a compelling story about a skilled agent and mother who leaves her children with others in order to carry out missions for the British Secret Service in the years following WWII. The problem: she lies to them about where she’s going, the dangers inherent in her work, and the roles of the men and women she’s left them with. This is not only a thriller; it is an examination of responsibility, memory, and the scars of childhood.
Masterful.
Meh. If this book was shortened, it might have helped. Repetitive. Can’t recommend.
Exactly what one would expect from a seasoned, exceptional author exploring the world at large as well as the characters detailed and specific.. A Joy to read; a wonder to discover.
This book read like poetry. Not because the words rhymed or were flowery but it was like getting images and symbols that collectively made up the story. It’s a mystery and coming of age tale uncovering who the narrator’s parents were outside of their parental roles. The post war London galaxy of problems and events like jazz clubs, dog racing, barges transporting goods on the canals, resistance workers trying to re-assimilate was so interesting. What will stick with me the longest is how wartime sacrifice by individuals for the greater good, while vital to victory, had negative and lasting impact on innocent bystanders.
Compelling, beautifully written reconstruction of a child’s experience during WW2. As an adult, the narrator comes to understand experiences that were mysterious and even frightening, but taken in stride as part of growing up. Wonderful structure, subtle emotions. I love this book.
Normally I enjoy a WWII historical fiction novel because there are so many amazing stories of bravery and courage, so I was hopeful when i started this book. But, to be honest, I had great difficulty getting into this book. It is basically the story of a man searching to understand his life and the people in it while he was a child and teenager. His mother will not share with him the information he seeks, so he must try to find, interpret, and imagine it on his own. I never felt like I really knew the characters, but that may have been intentional as Nathanial never really knows them either. For me, this book was a character being very introspective and lonely. He lost pretty much all the relationships Important to him and didn’t seem to try to build any new ones. Nathanial does find some modicum of closure at the end of the book, but it just left me feeling sad for him. This was not a bad book, just not my personal cup of tea.
This may be my favorite of Ondaatje’s book — imagine growing up the child of special agents during and after the war. It’s impossible to know who can be trusted or what should be believed. A gripping story with Ondaatje’s always breathtaking prose.
As he has done with masterful precision in each of his previous novels, Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight takes mystery and intrigue to a spellbinding level where every detail possesses significance and meaning beyond the moment of its revealing. Shortly after World War II, siblings Nathaniel and Rachel Williams are in their early teens when their parents must go abroad and place their children under the care of an enigmatic man named The Moth. Where their parents go upon leaving London remains as much a secret as The Moth himself and the various other figures who begin to frequent the lives of Nathaniel and Rachel. Nathaniel later discovers the dangers and consequences of his mother’s involvement in covert missions to gather data for British intelligence. Warlight is a brilliant and thrilling account of Nathaniel’s youth and of his attempts later in life to make sense of his memories and piece together fragments of clues about his mother’s elusive past. The elegance and beauty of Ondaatje’s prose assembles a mosaic of characters, scenes, and ideas that examine the intricacies of human loneliness and connection.
Written with Ondaatje’s lyrical and evocative prose, this tells the fascinating story of a teenager whose parents went off on mysterious missions, leaving him in the charge of dubious characters who moved goods around on barges on the Thames in the liminal fringes of legality during World War 2
A strange and captivating story set in an England still in recovery from WWII, told like a fragmented memoir. My favorite quote: “When you attempt a memoir, I am told, you need to be in an orphan state. So what is missing in you, and the things you have grown cautious and hesitant about, will come almost casually towards you. ‘A memoir is the lost inheritance,’ you realize…”
I liked it even better than the English Patient
Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight explores our need to belong, our futile attempts to create (or reconstruct) a stable, coherent identity. Subtle. Poetic. Memorable.
A page-turner- perfect for staying in out of our bitter cold here in Canada. Fascinating characters.
Literary Fiction, but also a page-turner
I’m a bit ambivalent towards the genre of Literary Fiction.
Yes, it’s the Valhalla of literature, that which by which other tales are inferior.
It’s what gets its author in the New Yorker, and the book into your book club. Literary fiction is classical music, there might be another genre that is jazz, and then everything else is secondary.
Yet I don’t always enjoy reading Literary Fiction tales, and I don’t always get a lot out of them.
Aristotle had a concept he called Telos, which is the ultimate object or aim of something.
If a knife can not cut well, it is not a good knife. If a towel can not dry well, it is not a good towel.
If you have a knife that dries well, and a towel that cuts well, you have neither a good knife nor towel.
A book’s telos should be one of two things in my opinion – it should keep you turning the page, or inform you.
Ruth Ware’s books keep me turning the page.
Yuval Noah Harari’s books inform me.
Both of their books have the Telos of good books.
But with Literary Fiction books, sometimes the Telos is ‘everyone else thinks it is supposed to be good.’
You read it for your book club, or some non-existent self-inflicted obligation, and you don’t enjoy it.
You don’t really get a lot from it either.
In short, you read it just to say you have read it.
Well Warlight is Literary Fiction, and everyone says its good, and it may be in your book club’s queue – but good news. It’s a page-turner and it’s informative, and that’s why I love it.
What is so great about Warlight – quite a bit
What’s so great about it besides being a page-turner?
It’s the characters, the monumental feel to everything, just the general tale of post WWII England.
And oh those characters – Michael Ondaatje really brings them out well.
This is a tale of abandonment and struggle – yet even the roughest character seems kind. There is no abuse in this tale – even though there could have been.
The times are difficult, but the characters are not.
In short, I recommend it
You can read it for a book club.
You can read it because everyone else loves it.
But I recommend you read it for yourself – because it is incredible.