Warlight

Set in the UK after WWII, protagonist Nathaniel tells the tale of being left in the care of an enigmatic person he calls The Moth while his parents leave the country to take care of undisclosed “business” in Singapore. Teens Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are supposed to go to boarding school, but they talk The Moth into living at home, where they are exposed to the clandestine activities of The Moth’s associates. An ex-boxer, The Darter, soon joins them. Nathaniel accompanies The Darter on trips down the Thames. Though he remains mostly in the dark, he suspects these trips involve illegal dealings.

The book is split into two parts. The first relates what happens to the two teens when their parents abandon them. The second show more takes place fourteen years later and follows Nathaniel’s attempts to reconstruct what was going on with his parents, particularly his mother, during and after the war. He understands more about the situation now that he is ten years older. The narrative sheds light on the aftermath of WWII, where many regional conflicts did not cease with the cease.

“On the continent guerrilla groups and Partisan fighters had emerged from hiding, refusing defeat. Fascist and German supporters were being hunted down by people who had suffered for five or more years. The retaliations and acts of revenge back and forth devastated small villages, leaving further grief in their wake. They were committed by as many sides as there were ethnic groups across the newly liberated map of Europe.”

Though it involves espionage, it is a reflective book involving little action. It is more about the impact of the parents’ espionage activities upon the children. The prose is stellar, as one may expect from Ondaatje. It worked for me as a way of depicting the pieces of a life that we puzzle out, never really knowing the entire picture but making inferences from what little we do know.

“The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out.” show less

I wish we could hear more from Rose on the choices she made i.e. why she entered the world of intelligence at the risk of sacrificing her family. We don't even know how she died aside from an oblique reference that the glass pane was shattered, and we have to be satisfied with the fragments that Nathaniel picked up and patched with his imagination. Nathaniel cuts a melancholy figure at the end of the book, trying to survive with 'barely held stories', and 'gathering what was invisible and unspoken', 'sewing it all together in order to survive'. Rereading this, he is just doing what many of us do - using our imagination to try to understand the situation. It is an essential survival tool, or we will drown in melancholy or pity.

Wonderful exploration of memory, imagination and awareness. The narrator ponders the events of his adolescence just after the end of WWII, when both parents left their home in London on "business", leaving 14-year-old Nathaniel and his older sister Rachel in the care of a man who had been lodging in their home. "The Moth", as the children referred to him, got up to mysterious business himself, sometimes involving Nathaniel and Rachel without their full understanding. When Nathaniel discovers that the steamer trunk he watched his mother pack so carefully is hidden in the basement, everything he thinks he knows is called into question. Clearly Mother did not fly off to join Father who had been assigned to one of Unilever's overseas show more offices. The Moth assures him his mother is fine, but will not tell him where she is. Gradually, through various interactions and inquiries, the adult Nathaniel pieces together a picture of his mother’s clandestine post-war activities, and begins to understand the part he and Rachel unwittingly played in some of them. A marvelous twisty tale. show less

Shortly after the end of WWII, Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are left in the care of a family friend when their parents travel to Asia for work. But their caretaker has a strange circle of friends with varying levels of criminality that draws in the siblings in different ways. Both at that time and over a decade later, Nathaniel tries to reconstruct what was truly happening around him and how it has made him the man he is.

I often find Ondaatje a challenging reading experience and Warlight was no exception. The narrative meanders like the rivers that Nathaniel spends time traveling and the line between his memories and his conjectures are fuzzy. While he explores how blind Nathaniel is to everything around him in the narcissistic way show more of many teens, he leaves tantalizing hints of who the other people who surround the protagonist might truly be. An excellent book club pick, I recognize Ondaatje's skill but while the read was interesting I didn't find it particularly enjoyable. show less

Michael Ondaatje once again writes a coming of age book about a boy left to his own devices to navigate in a world of adults. The year is 1945 in London. Nathaniel and Rachel are informed that they will be left in the care of a guardian while their parents are moving to Singapore for their father's work. The father, a scarred war veteran, has been offered a better job and heads out first. Their mother stays behind for a short while and makes a great show of packing for her anticipated adventure in Singapore.

They are left in the care of a character the teens identify as the Moth, whom they believe to have unsavory connections. One of his companions,The Darter, is an ex-prize fighter, an aficionado of greyhound racing, and a smuggler. show more Through these two characters Nathaniel secures work in a hotel as a elevator operator and a kitchen helper, then later helping The Darter with some of his smuggling operations. Soon Rachel discovers their mother's trunk full of belongings stashed in the basement. So where are their parents?

Slowly it is revealed that Nathaniel is writing this book as an adult reflecting back on the experience and the clues he uncovered as an adult.

Beautifully written, atmospheric, sometimes heart breaking and often humorous, I give it 4.5 stars. show less

There is a distinct darkness that pervades Warlight, both in the tone of the prose as well as the dimly lit nature of most of the scenes in the book. This lack of illumination serves as a wonderful metaphor for the story itself, in which Nathaniel and Rachel, teenaged siblings living in London near the end of World War II, are suddenly abandoned by their parents. Placed in the care of two mysterious men they know only as The Moth and The Darter, the brother and sister grow up over the next ten years largely in the dark about their parents’ fate but with very different impressions of what is actually happening around them. The novel thereby creates a striking blend of a compelling mystery, a war story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age show more tale.

For readers familiar with Michael Ondaatje’s distinctive style, it will come as no surprise that this story is not unveiled in a straightforward, linear way. The first half of the book concentrates on Nathaniel’s post-war life in the care of two men who may well be criminals, while the second part reconstructs his mother Rose’s wartime activities by way of the son’s mostly passive attempts to find the truth. Throughout the story, however, the author frequently shifts the perspective forward or backward in time and uses foreshadowing to create an effective sense of foreboding. He also introduces the reader to a dizzying array of different characters, all of whom have a purpose and figure into the ultimate resolution of the novel.

I have long been a big fan of Ondaatje’s work, as much for his poetic, lyrical writing style as for the intricate and engaging stories he tells. While Warlight did not quite approach the absolute best of what the author has produced in the past—The English Patient remains one of my very favorite novels—I nevertheless found it to be a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking reading experience. There is a great line that appears toward the end of the book that summarizes so much of what the story is about: “Do we eventually become what we are originally meant to be?” For both Rose and Nathaniel, this question is resolved, even if their respective answers are not the ones they might have wanted. show less

Set in the UK after WWII, protagonist Nathaniel tells the tale of being left in the care of an enigmatic person he calls The Moth while his parents leave the country to take care of undisclosed “business” in Singapore. Teens Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are supposed to go to boarding school, but they talk The Moth into living at home, where they are exposed to the clandestine activities of The Moth’s associates. An ex-boxer, The Darter, soon joins them. Nathaniel accompanies The Darter on trips down the Thames. Though he remains mostly in the dark, he suspects these trips involve illegal dealings.

The book is split into two parts. The first relates what happens to the two teens when their parents abandon them. The second show more takes place fourteen years later and follows Nathaniel’s attempts to reconstruct what was going on with his parents, particularly his mother, during and after the war. He understands more about the situation now that he is ten years older. The narrative sheds light on the aftermath of WWII, where many regional conflicts did not cease with the cease.

“On the continent guerrilla groups and Partisan fighters had emerged from hiding, refusing defeat. Fascist and German supporters were being hunted down by people who had suffered for five or more years. The retaliations and acts of revenge back and forth devastated small villages, leaving further grief in their wake. They were committed by as many sides as there were ethnic groups across the newly liberated map of Europe.”

Though it involves espionage, it is a reflective book involving little action. It is more about the impact of the parents’ espionage activities upon the children. The prose is stellar, as one may expect from Ondaatje. It worked for me as a way of depicting the pieces of a life that we puzzle out, never really knowing the entire picture but making inferences from what little we do know.

“The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out.” show less