Divisadero and The Glass Castle

I just finished reading Divisadero by The English Patient’s Michael Ondaatje. Didn’t love it. It is a bitter shame too because I was peeing my pants over the story in the first 70 pages. The tension was perfect, the setting delicious, the characters good enough to eat. Then Ondaatje took the book to left field, going from orchards and farmland to gangster Las Vegas and onto entirely new characters in France with little or no connection to the original story. I think the book should have been tagged as three novellas.

Ondaatje is, however, a master at mouth-watering language. Each image is given time to taste and savor. But this lushness is at times gratuitous and interferes with the basics; Where are we? Who is talking? Is this super long image important to the overall story? Should I log it in the brain or not? The book was a collage of wonderful images, but not a cohesive story…and because the first pages had so much promise, I felt cheated.

Now I am reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Amazing Story. The story clips along, image following image. With Wells, I wish I could taste the images a bit longer. You ate just cantaloupe for a whole week because they fell out of a truck? Wait a second…slow down…let me experience that with you.

I am revising my short stories and trying to manage these issues. Mainly, I feel that I need to push images further, stay longer, allowing a hint of poetry. No writing task is easy. Especially considering I have major writing anxiety and spend most days figuring out how to not write.

Kudos goes to Ondaatje and Walls for actually writing a book.