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Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion uses its Toronto setting in the way that Martin Amis's London Fields uses London or Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz uses Montreal. In Skin, Toronto is a main character, although it's a character few of us have seen before. Set in the 1920s and '30s, the novel replaces the official history of Toronto's industrial adolescence, a history of commissioned architecture and suited politicians with ceremonial shovels, with an immigrant's history of crushing labour, repressive laws, a new language gleaned from matinee plays, and crowded apartment buildings where "a bottle of fruit whiskey" could often be found on summer nights dangling on "a long piece of twine" from fire escape to fire escape for all to share.
A quartet of vibrant characters animates Ondaatje's reclaimed Toronto. Farm-boy Patrick Lewis relocates to Toronto with a dual inheritance: a habit of solitude and a marketable skill with dynamite. Nicholas Temelcoff is a daredevil builder on the Bloor St. Viaduct eager for the most dangerous and acrobatic jobs. Alice Gull transforms the dedication of an early vocation into the passions of an actress and a political revolutionary. Italian thief David Caravaggio robs "the mean rich, the soft rich" and (literally) paints his way out of prison.
Virtuosos in isolation, the characters are beset by forces beyond their control. Ondaatje's tale ends up questioning the very abilities that it so delights in depicting: might the "solitary" strength of a hero be a curse rather than a blessing? Rewriting as it does the history of a growing, multicultural metropolis, In the Skin of a Lion plays with public history and private passion to examine the very fabric of community. --Darryl Whetter
From Publishers Weekly
A spellbinding writer, Ondaatje exhibits a poet's sensibility and care for the precise, illuminating word. The author of Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid again paints an impressionistic picture mixing real events and intersected fictional lives. We meet Patrick Lewis in his youth, living in the harsh but beautiful Canadian back country, with his father, a dynamiter of log jams. The action then segues to Toronto in the 1920s, where daredevil bridge builders, immigrants from many countries, are engaged in erecting an enormous span. A scene in which a young nun is swept off the unfinished bridge on a stormy night will make readers gasp; descriptions of the skill and agility of the bridge workers and the laborers who build a tunnel under Lake Ontario, going about their work in the yawning maw of danger, are also graphically stunning. When Patrick comes to Toronto, feeling himself an immigrant from the provinces, his life becomes entwined with those of actresses Clara Dickens and Alice Gull, with whom he experiences love, despair and, eventually, compulsion to commit a violent act. Ondaatje everywhere uses "a spell of language" to spin his brilliantly evoked tale. He writes, "The best art can order the chaotic tumble of events" and "the first sentence of every novel should be: 'Trust me, this will take time, but there is order here, very faint, very human.' " Both statements aptly describe this beautiful work.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
if you onlyever read one ondaatje novel, this is the one,
By
This review is from: In the Skin of a Lion (Paperback)
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.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
all the beauty that surrounds us,
By Jonna (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In the Skin of a Lion (Paperback)
I am trapped by these words, I slow down on each one almost notwanting to know what comes next because I know it'll most certainly besomething that puts me in awe and leaves me hungry for more. I thought The English Patient was a wonderful book, I walked in Libyan desert looking for Zerzura for weeks after reading that book. But In The Skin Of A Lion is something so much more. This book moves me so I'm left speechless. The continuance, the surprises, the beauty, the characters. If it was possible to choose to write like someone I would absolutely pick Michael Ondaatje. His work is simply beautiful. I am amazed. Read this book, read all of them. Find the fine red line that ties all the stories together. END
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I can never say 'Shh' without a shiver now.,
By A Customer
This review is from: In the Skin of a Lion (Paperback)
I will begin with the problem of the book. It reads initially slowly. This is, for many, a problem. It's dense prose, in fractured time. It's also a traditional story, with a plot that moves in a direct line up to the pointed climax, and then a resolution down from that high point.Basically, the beginning is slow, yet dense, and becomes more intense as time passes. If you have not the patience to push through the first thirty pages, you should stop reading books. The plot thickens, and intensifies until the moment of pointed climax. And I cannot say 'Shh' without a shiver. The prose: gorgeous without being over-the-top. The characters: firmly and clearly human, while each is a little super-human in their own quiet ways, as many of us are. In other words, one of the greatest novels in the world to emerge from the late twentieth century. The techniques are firmly rooted in time and place, and the words shed light on a world that is, for us, indescribable. A heart, and a mind, so rare to find together, lies before you. Be prepared for a life-changing journey.
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