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Slaughter is very much a novel of obsessions. In addition to a music of "pure" notes and "long squawks," Bolden's passions include his wife, Nora, their children, the local tabloid he edits (and fills with stories of death), and the lover for whom he eventually abandons his family (and possibly his music). Minor characters are equally fixated. The photographer Bellocq (another Storyville character Ondaatje lifts from history) agonizes over his portraits of prostitutes. The detective Webb meticulously hunts for the missing Bolden. But while each of Ondaatje's later novels splits its attention equally among a quartet of characters, Slaughter rarely shifts its focus from the manic Bolden. Here, then, is Ondaatje's clearest picture of the self. Clear, loud, and bursting with passion, the self he pictures isn't always pretty. --Darryl Whetter
Review
"One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time." — Geoff Dyer, The Observer
"A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written." — The Sunday Times
"Coming Through Slaughter ... is so stuffed full of the dolour and lust that both buoys and blemishes a life, it reads like a story dying to be told." — Books in Canada
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing,
By Lauren "Lauren" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coming Through Slaughter (Paperback)
I am really disappointed by all the vapid, negative reviews for this novel that were submitted to date - it is pretty pathetic to critisize a novel because it was difficult to read. Ondaatje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' is vivid and overpowering. An amazing read - for people who like to be challenged by literature and who enjoy works that cannot be made into tv movies.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Give this book to a deaf person.,
By James T. Heeney (Montclair, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coming Through Slaughter (Paperback)
Who can talk truthfully about the borderlands between the wilderness of insanity and the Eden of genius? Well, Michael Ondaatje, for one. Fans of "The English Patient," and later works should not pass this by. The most prosaic of M.O.'s fiction is poetic to say the least, but here, as in "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid," Ondaatje skirts the borders between poetry and novelty just as deftly as he does the two realms I earlier mentioned.The fictionalized history of Buddy Bolden, cornet-player, jazz pioneer, and psychopath comes alive in this tale of turn of the century New Orleans. It is a tawdry, violent, heat-soaked world, full of passion and lust, suffering and early death, brightly kindled in the reader's imagination by the spare, impressionistic images Ondaatje provides. But more than anything else, it is the jazz, the frenetic ferocity of the music that comes alive in the writing. If I had to explain the joys and powers of music to a deaf person, I would give up, and give him this book instead. Give this heady experience a try. And if you have any doubts about the trendiness/currentness of the topic, rest assured. Discussion and wonder regarding Buddy Bolden is very much alive today, and interest in this period in general endures. To give you an example, I noted recently an advertisement featuring the exhibition of photographs in an Uptown gallery by E.J. Bellocq, another (historical) character in Mr. Ondaatje's story.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Buddy Bolden,
By Timothy E. Barnes (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coming Through Slaughter (Paperback)
A lyrical fable cast in New Orleans in the early 20th century, based on the short mad legendary life of cornet player Buddy Bolden. Ondaatje writes, about the bright withering mind of a passionate man, with dueling strokes of light and shadow, in rusted southern language. A remarkable prose poem; a silent whirring glance of an artist falling down. Highly recommended.
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