Warlight

March 6, 2019 11:07 AM - by Michael Ondaatje

NATIONAL BEST SELLER From 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 itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister,...

March 7 is the date of this book's first round matchup with Call Me Zebra

posted by OHenryPacey (2 comments total)

I have yet to finish. it's good, but a slow burn. I just wanted to get the post up before tomorrow.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:08 AM on March 6, 2019

This seemed to draw on the same source material as Kate Atkinson's Transcription. I googled some of the things that occur in both and discovered that a memoir addressing this time period was published in 2015. It must have inspired both. (I'm being vague not to spoil elements of Warlight that are not overtly addressed until at the end of the novel.)

There were also some curious resonances with The Italian Teacher. In both books, a young man grapples with having exceptional and difficult parents. Warlight's Nathaniel, however, is a less satisfying character than The Italian Teacher's Pinch. He's a passive observer of the world around him. What makes Warlight standout is that the world around him is peopled with a slew of characters much more interesting than he is.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:36 PM on March 6, 2019