'Divisadero': Where narrative splinters

There's more poetry than plot in the latest from Michael Ondaatje, the author of 'The English Patient.'

from the June 12, 2007 edition

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The novel is named after the street Anna lives on in San Francisco, even though none of the action takes place there. "Divisadero, from the Spanish for 'division'…. Or it might derive from the word divisar, meaning to 'gaze from a distance,' " Anna, who narrates most of the book, helpfully explains. Both definitions work just fine, since Anna is divided irrevocably from everyone she loved and spends a lot of time gazing from a distance at her memories of them.

I never like to give away too many twists, but I couldn't even if I wanted to with "Divisadero," because the plot dead ends. Midway through, Ondaatje just packs up and abandons his characters. This stylistic sucker punch, for many readers, will feel like a violation of trust. From the time we're 4, bouncing on the bed and asking "what happens next," readers are trained to believe that stories are designed to answer that question. Ondaatje doesn't have any interest in doing so and seems to regard it as terribly middle-brow of us to expect it.

After jettisoning his three protagonists, he leaps back to the early 20th century to tell the story of Lucien Segura, the writer Anna is researching. Provided you can put aside your irritation at being led down the garden path for 165 pages (and for some, that may be too big an if), Segura's story is powerful.

Devotees of Ondaatje's work who just want to read sentences constructed by the Booker Prize winner, rest assured: There are many, and they are lovely. The stories aren't connected by plot (except through Anna), but threaded throughout Segura's family life and experiences in World War I, there are echoes of the farm in California.

Dead parents are recaptured through tape recordings and characters keep mixing up one another's names. "Gotraskhalana is a term in Sanskrit poetics for calling a loved one by a wrong name, and means, literally, 'stumbling on the name.'… What these verbal accidents do is aim a flashlight into the brain, reveal its vast museum of facts and desires." (Did I mention Anna has a PhD?)

For those wondering whether to invest the time and the $25, readers of poetry are likely to have a much better time than are readers of mysteries. (In the interests of disclosure, I am a mystery buff.)

Ultimately, "Divisadero" seems more concerned with echoes and evocations than telling a good story. Fair enough. But it ultimately lacks the wrenching power of "Anil's Ghost," in which real emotion ran like a current alongside the artistic endeavor.

• Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.

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