Monday, January 26, 2004

 
I received a gift in the post last week, from an old friend who is far away. I wasn't so interested by the back cover summary to read the novel, as it has too many characters and too many coincidences. A grand history of people knitted together in Toronto of the 1920s, within which I found a small detail to coo over:

"As if he can be given that gift, to relive those days when Alice was with him and Hana, which in literature is the real gift. He turns the page backwatds. Once more there is the image of them struggling and tickling Alice until she releases her grip on her shirt and it comes off with a flourish, and Hana jumps up, waving it like a rebel's flag in the small green-painted room. All these fragments of memory...so we can retreat fro, the grand story and stumble accidentally upon a luxury, one of those underground pools where we can sit still. Those moments, those few pages in a book we go back and forth over" (148).

This is "the pleasure of recall," "what history means," "that arrow into the past" (149).

Hinted at is the condition of remorse, "a turning around on yourself" (67).

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (New York: Penguin books, 1987).
posted by Open Mouth 7:26 AM