Warlight

Since my own novel is set partly in post-war England, I was drawn to Ondaatje’s Warlight, which begins in 1945 London as the city is recovering from brutal bombing. Another hook for me was the youthful characters; my book is also populated with war-confused children. Ondaatje’s narrator, 14-year-old Nathaniel, recalls his youth with the benefit of adult wisdom. He and his sister Rachel are abandoned by their parents to the care of some eccentric and slightly dangerous characters. Their teen years are marked by many mysterious events and experiences, only beginning to clarify in retrospect. Do we ever know… show more.

I’m not sure why war books have dominated my leisure reading of late, but Michael Ondaatje, who wrote a wonderfully complex World War 2 novel in The English Patient, has returned to the subject with a, to me, more accessible tale in Warlight. Don’t expect all the vagaries to be magically made clear by the end, but do anticipate being engrossed by a subtly heartbreaking story of a brother and a sister abandoned by parents called to war duty (or maybe not) and left to the care of a mishmash of mysterious rogues (or maybe not again.) It’s a… show more.