HIGH WIRE: Ondaatje juggles multiple narratives
Early in the English Patient , Michael Ondaatje describes how a character likes to narrate stories: "There are stories the man recites quietly into the room which slip from level to level like a hawk." This is also Ondaatje's own literary secret. Over the years, his material has been almost absurdly diverse he's written about Billy the Kid, jazz musician Buddy Bolden, his own family's history, contemporary Sri Lanka but his idea of how to structure a book has been reasonably consistent: start a story that whets the reader's appetite with exquisite metaphors and sharp observations of psychology and society,...
