Patrick says he will tell Hana on the drive who Clara is, and more stories of his and her mother’s life. However, when it arrived and I told her how I thought she'd possibly even love it, she informed me she's too busy. note: I tackled this book as part of my 2023 reading challenge to read books from this crowd-sourced list of recommended standalone novels published between 1985-2007: https://docs.

Patrick and Hana thus embark on a journey at dawn, taking the car for a four-hour trip to Marmora, Ontario, where Clara is waiting for them. It depicts the bloody history behind the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct (that you use every day when the Subway passes from Braodview and Castle Frank Station) as well as the R. Nuns,actresses, missing millionaires, orphan girls, burglars, radicals, immigrants and great marvels of engineering. After reading this book, I feel like I've been to Ontario and in particular Toronto during the early-20th century. No mention is made of the size of her wimple or the ballooning of her skirts, but it must be her clothes that catch the wind.I do believe Ondaatje, however, despite the way his characters fall so beautifully asleep, because he is not in thrall to his own talent.

If writing is being haunted by your own ghost, then In the Skin of a Lion is haunted by the visionaries and builders of the fiction that is the modern city. There are surprises in his writing; two years can pass in a paragraph, a man can go from perfect peace to being literally set on fire, a nun can be saved from certain death, and during the space of hours, she can cut her habit with a pair of shears and leave behind the life she'd known. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the 1992 Man Booker Prize, was adapted into a multi-award winning Oscar movie, and was awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Médicis; and Warlight was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. for his ability to shine light on the wonder of unknown anonymous people, the hidden creativity and integrity of those without power, who construct quiet lives of beauty and integrity and resistance. With an introduction by Anne EnrightBefore the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.e., illumination of the Finnish loggers, moonlight, when Caravaggio is learning to become a thief in total darkness, Patrick's removal of the lamp when breaking into the water plant, the lights being turned off during the final dialogue between Patrick and Harris. Though to be completely accurate, he probably would've felt like an outsider no matter where he ended up, such was his upbringing and outlook. Patrick tells Harris how Alice Gull was killed and we learn that she accidentally picked up the wrong satchel, containing a bomb.

It jumps sometimes to a few other characters, such as Nicolas Temelcoff, with all of these characters related to Patrick’s narrative in some way. Each of these functions as a single note in the major chord that is the "worker-hero" Nicholas Temelcoff.

A nun did fall from the Viaduct before its completion, multi-theatre owner, Ambrose Small, did disappear, and the murder of two labour union organizers at the time was an unfortunate reality. I suspect that years from now it will be difficult for me to remember the details of the novel, but what will stay with me are the images Ondaatje manages to conjure swiftly and without any real effort: a group of Scandinavian immigrants skating across a frozen river in a small town in Northern Ontario, defying its wilderness and iciness; wind throwing off a nun from an unfinished bridge, and a brave builder who risks his life to save her; a man escaping from prison and into the country, staying by himself in remote lakeside houses, the silence and vastness of the area having an almost preternatural quality. Ondaatje makes us care for what part that these small people, those who build the cities with their ill remunerated labor, and lost their lives in the course, played in making this history.

There is a scene, in the very beginning of this book, during which Patrick Lewis, primary voice among the the half-dozen or so protagonists, watches Scandinavian men skate home over a frozen river on a dark winter's night in Northern Ontario, carrying handfuls of burning cattails over their heads. As a young boy in Depot Creek, Ontario, Patrick watches the loggers arrive in town in the winter, work in the mills in the other seasons, and skate on the frozen river.But the power of this book resides in his characterization - you come to be absolutely devoted to the individuals - and I choose that word deliberately - that populate this novel.