In the Skin of a Lion

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite imagery and a masterful plot
Review: 'In the Skin of a Lion' is quite possibly the best book I have ever read. The plot requires time, but when it does come, it comes easily and it shines through wonderfully. Ondaatje is a true master of imagery, and so it's best to read this book slowly: take time to devour each scene and try to picture what he writes. And the thematic interest in how history silences and darkens the ordinary people, and how it is precisely the ordinary, the regular, that give history and life their sparks of humanity, Ondaatje weaves all of this into the book unassumingly. Character-wise, Ondaatje introduces us to Caravaggio, who will later feature in 'The English Patient,' and yet is at his richest and most romantically intriguing here, and centres the story around Patrick, and two enigmatic females, Alice and Clara. And of course, there's Temelcoff, swinging through the dark blindly and yet with as much skill as Ondaatje recreates a little-known and yet fascinating taste of Toronto life. I love this book, and could easily read it over and over.

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Summary: Wasted Genius
Review: Although I am a fan of Michele Ondaatje's writing, frankly I do not think that In the Skin of a Lion is one of Michele Ondaatje's best works. It seems as if he were testing out his third person narrative skills, but was not able to pull it off in an overly interesting manner. There are many points in the book when I had to break and have a coffee because of Ondaatje's ability to give small amounts of detail in as many words possible, often leading to my protracted boredom of the book.
This criticism is emphasized in the first chapter. It endlessly drones on about Patrick's childhood, and his hard life on the farm. At this point the reader is saved from complete ennui only by the interesting character focus transitions. Ondaatje is able to keep the reader awake by almost randomly jumping from character to character. These changeovers make the book hard to follow and I would often have to skip backwards a few pages to pick out the hidden details that give away who Ondaatje is talking about. Ondaatje's narrative voice does have its advantages. The third person narrative is able to describe the viewpoint of many characters and lets the reader discover more about how their situation, because it feels as if you are watching the story unfold, instead of trying to get the reader to become a part of the story. Personally I enjoy being able to get more involved in a book then just to read it as if I were a outside observer. Thus I can not agree with Ondaatje's choice in narrative voice.
I found the book least successful when the character in focus was switched from Patrick to Ambrose within a mere few pages. This caused me great distress and plenty of flipping back and rereading the transition.
All in all, I enjoy the story but not the way it is told. I think Ondaatje should have used a different native voice that may have given the book more light.

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Summary: Michael Ondaatje's Anti-Hero
Review: As some of the reviewers have said, _In The Skin Of A Lion_ must be read slowly to be truly appreciated, otherwise much of the subtleties of this beautifully written, poetic, and sometimes maddeningly abstract novel will be missed. I usually have no difficulty reading a book while travelling on a train or a bus, but with this book the various distractions made it very difficult to do so. On a number of occasions I found it worthwhile to backtrack to re-read much of what I missed in my first reading.

The book, not so much plot driven, acts more as a mood piece on the romances of Patrick Lewis, the main character, as well as painterly images of the Canadian farms and woodlands and then of workmen's tunnelling under the Great Lakes to build the waterworks which play a very important part in the novel. Then there's the prison escape scene, which may be described as "a meditation in blue."

When plot and action take over, the story becomes incredibly riveting. It made me proud of those individuals, often times desperate, who have risked probable prison terms, and even their lives, to fight for the rights of the little people who built the world's great architectural structures against the millionaires who exploited these workers for financial gain. Patrick Lewis (and Caravaggio, who later appears in _The English Patient_) is such a man, and he is the novel's true heroic anti-hero.

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Summary: Ondaatje's World
Review: I read this novel five years ago in high school. At first, I found it incredibly difficult because I was use to the ease of modern paperback fiction. One of the drawbacks of this novel is that it takes concentration and a passion for unusual styles of writing. Ondaatje is situated somewhere between poetry and prose.

The effort is well-rewarded because it will open your eyes to the best kind of literature. It does not underestimate the reader's intelligence and it invites you to open your mind's eye to the symbols that recur throughout the book. It is well-researched and thorough with wonderful insights into Canadian history.

The novel essentially explores identity and industrialism. It asks reader to consider the importance of narrative and history. The plot (loosely but wonderfully held together by a nonlinear structure and well captured by other reviews already so I won't rehash it) is an addendum because it is the moments interpolated between that counts. Through all this, if you persevere, you will find that Ondaatje will awaken you to the beauty of ordinary events and exchanges between people, partly through his lyricism but mostly through his metaphors.

Someone once said that a great novel is one that lingers with you and creates its own language so that you are filled with a different world for which, you are glad to have lived in for awhile. I can only think of three authors who have accomplished this: Salinger, Arundhati Roy... but the master for me is certainly Michael Ondaatje.

Rating:
Summary: In the Skin of a Lion: A Novel by Michael Ondaatje
Review: I think this is a pretty terribly written and overrated book. I didn't like English Patient to begin with, but I thought I had read it when I was too young, so I gave In the Skin of a Lion a try. What bothered me most was the dialogue--it felt so contrived. And I couldn't care about the characters. In fact, the whole novel seemed vaporous--that is, superficially lovely but lacking any substance.

Rating:
Summary: Breath taking literature
Review: I'm a grade 11 student who unknowingly picked an awsome book to do an end of the semester essay on. I thought the book was going to be a slow read, yet i quicky changed my mind as story unfolds. I was held spell-bound by the complexity of it, yet Ondaatje creates that "its a small world after all" feeling. The book was beautiful and totaly ironic. The flow is altogther seductive, and fills you with passion; weather it be rage or love or despair.

i am still finding it difficult to produce a thesis for my essay. but with further analisis i will be-able to complete this assignment with a smile on my face. it has been an honor to study some one of Michael Ondaatje's works.

Rating:
Summary: if you onlyever read one ondaatje novel, this is the one
Review: In 1987, Ondaatje wrote his chef d'ouevre, In the Skin of a Lion, which combines the best of his previous prose, poetry, and recent autobiography. Here one will see fictional characters come to believable life, prose more sonorous than most poetry of the day, and learn more about the history and politics of Canada than one does at school (unless, of course, one is lucky enough to be Canadian.) Many feel (and I believe rightly so) that this is the book that should have won the prestigious Booker Prize--an honor later given to 1992's The English Patient. Certainly, this is the book that helped give birth to the latter. It is here that we meet Patrick Lewis, Caravaggio, and a much younger Hana. Lewis is the anti-hero of the story, so deftly written that we grow with him, we love with him, and we grieve with him. I somehow feel that Patrick is closer to Ondaatje's heart more so than any other character that he's written until the advent of Kip in The English Patient. The tale of Patrick's life in "Upper America" made me weep at each reading, as did the sheer beauty of Ondaatje's prose. In my humble opinion, it is his finest prose to date.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a Try
Review: Michael Ondaatje is definitely a talented writer, and the complex intertwining stories found in this book make for a very interesting read. However, I find Ondaatje's narrative voice to be rather smug, and his dialogue extremely Hollywood.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, as there is a lot to enjoy in this book. His use of imagery and descriptive language is incredible, for instance. Also, his graceful blending of history and fiction, and his ability to create incredibly complex layers of theme and image certainly justify his reputation as one of Canada's top writers of fiction. Unfortunately, I just can't get over his habit of incorporating cheesy dialogue, stock-ish characters, and wacky action sequences into the various stories presented in this book. I know that the novel isn't intended to be a realist work, but I didn't like the use of matinee-action convention in some parts of the story... for example, Patrick's James Bond-style attack on the Water Purifcation plant.

I haven't read much of Ondaatje's other work, but from my experience with this book, I wouldn't recommend starting here. However, I do think there is still enough good stuff in this novel for it to be worth a try at some point.

Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Novel
Review: Ondaatje is a brilliant writer. Devotees can watch his style develop with each novel. Integrating poetry into a sort of translucent prose, rhythmic, slow to reveal itself. This is how we meet life and people. There is no script, just pieces that flash past and we take them and put them into the puzzle as best we can. Ondaatje's novels feel like we are living them. They are revealed to us in shards that make sense only as they start to add up.

Alice seems to have been the nun who stepped off the bridge, Caravaggio married the girl from the mushroom farm, Clara can return only after Small dies but we never see her return, we just think she will. Questions don't answer themselves, we have to answer them on our own. Sometimes, we may be wrong. Sometimes coincidence and deja vu make the thing seem artificial. Readers have a role to play in Ondaatje's novels. If you're lazy or unprepared to do your part, then don't bother picking this one up.

Rating:
Summary: In the Skin of a Lion: A Novel by Michael Ondaatje
Review: This is an extraordinary book that was required reading--fortunately--for a college communications' course. Initially I was lost and couldn't understand the thread of the story. Quickly I found not one thread but several, weaving magically across the pages, absorbing me so completely that I didn't want to stop reading until I reached the very last page. The book left me wishing for a Part 2. Very few books do I read more than once. This one I've returned to several times because it so personifies the "beauty of the written word."