Vol. 1, Iss. 1Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje Michael Ondaatje’s most recent novel, Divisadero, intertwines multiple narratives overlapping in their settings, characters and parallel story lines. Ondaatje’s novel follows his description of a villanelle, a French form of poetry that repeats “familiar moments of emotion” rather than moving in a linear sequence. Ondaatje guides the reader through the separate chapters and characters around these “familiar moments of emotion.”He begins by delving into the story of two teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, who inhabit a farm in Northern California with their father and Coop, a boy who helps on the farm and lives with them. After a traumatic event in their past, Ondaatje leads us into each of their futures, whereupon he changes focus to probe into the lives of other characters who interact with Anna, Coop, and Claire. This is shown following Ondaatje’s discussion of Anna. Ondaatje focuses on Anna’s new boyfriend, Rafael, whose past involves a family friend named Lucien Segura, a writer. We learn that Lucien is the writer that Anna researches after leaving Northern California and that he used to inhabit the house where Anna stays in France. Similar connections continue to appear as Ondaatje explores his characters.Besides merely temporally and locally linking the characters, Ondaatje’s circling joins the characters in “familiar moments of emotion.” We see the communal struggle with how one’s past impacts one’s present. Ondaatje uses identities and names to mirror the struggle with the past and the present. Anna’s and Claire’s names are often confused by other characters in their past when their lives and experiences were still intertwined. When their paths diverge and their futures become distinctly separate, their identities are no longer confused. Anna, in fact, changes her name to create a new identity, in an attempt to sever her ties to the past. Rafael’s father imagines how his past could have been different with a different name, “he might have behaved and participated with more ease and subtlety just for having the epaulette of such a name.” Ondaatje beautifully articulates the significance of a new name through the character’s high, if fantastical, hopes to “turn into a three-ounce bird or a subtle grammatical form” with the new name he gives himself. However, the circling through these narratives makes it increasingly clear that past identities are not erased with new names.Ondaatje creates parallels in the various characters’ stories to reiterate the themes in the novel. Again and again we see traumatic, often violent, events in the past followed by an inevitable disconnect from this past. Anna’s father severely beats Coop for sleeping with Anna and she stabs her father to stop him. Following this, she flees her home and withdraws into herself, refusing to speak about her past. Coop leaves and begins a new life of gambling. Neither returns or ever expects to see the other again. Lucien is half-blinded early in life; a rabid dog smashes a window whose shards fly into Lucien’s eye. To avoid infection the eye is removed. During the trauma of a long recovery, he submerges into his fiction. Coop is again violently attacked and after this second encounter he has no memory of his past. This is the clearest instance of the disconnect. Ondaatje parallels these stories to emphasize the inevitability of the past’s impact on the present even when one attempts to forget it.Ondaatje also directs the reader’s attention to the format and medium of his novel. In the individual stories he often subtly references the form and the use of writing. Ondaatje reinforces the idea that writing can help one confront the past and oneself, but he also gives instances of how one can maintain distance from one’s past through writing. The writer, Lucien, cannot find peace with the memory of his friend from the past until he writes enough stories to relay all the details of her character. Only after his writing purge does Lucien feel that he has sufficiently confronted his past with her. On the other hand, Anna uses writing to hide from herself. She describes writing as “where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us”.In expressing these ideas, Ondaatje incorporates wonderful language throughout the novel. Unusual combinations of nouns and adjectives like, “a name as small as a keyhole” and “a tune that seemed to have no scaffolding” precisely and perfectly evoke the essence of what he describes in a way typical description could not. However, Ondaatje often seems to underestimate the reader’s ability to tease out his overarching ideas through his description of the characters’ actions and dialogue. Therefore, he heavy-handedly inserts statements laying out that which he had subtly informed the previous passage with. For example in a scene between Anna and Rafael, Ondaatje’s dialogue and description of their interaction creates the sense that Anna remains guarded with Rafael and wants to conceal her past. Directly after this passage Ondaatje flatly states in reference to Anna, “She is still fearful of true intimacy…Her past is hidden from everyone.” This detracts from the previous passage, which already implied these feelings. Without these additions, the novel would be more nuanced. Ondaatje’s writing can easily carry the novel and express his ideas without the direct statements he includes.Ondaatje’s skillful integration of multiple storylines, enchanting description, and accomplished use of format allow a reader to effortlessly enjoy Ondaatje’s mastery of language while simultaneously poring over his many levels of meaning. According to Ondaatje, “divisadero” can refer to both a division and the act of gazing at something from a distance. Ondaatje brings to light the inevitable elimination of the division and distance between the past and present, and simultaneously bridges the division between author and reader, not allowing us to merely experience at a distance.