First off, I'd like to say that I listened to the audio version of this book and I believe this was a critical and exquisite mistake. Exquisite because the vocalist did a fantastic job and had a wonderful voice. Critical because the language of the novel, the dreamy quality and the trustworthiness of the narrator led to a really hard narrative to follow in audio format.
The story opens with our narrator, Nathaniel, thinking back upon a very formative period in his life during his early teen years when both of his parents left him and his sister, Rachel, in the care of strangers. Their father, an emotionally distant, blurry figure who, as an executive at Unilever has been called to relocate to the company's Singapore offices for a year. Their mother, Rose, has decided to accompany him for the year, sending the children to boarding school. Their London home is to be looked after by a boarder whom the children refer to as "The Moth." During the months after their father's departure and the start of school whereby their mother will leave, the children grow close to their mother, whom they have no real connection with, having lived with their grandparents during much of the war years.
Once they are ensconced at boarding school, both Nathaniel and Rachel determine they hate it and sneak out to return to their home. The Moth promptly visits the schools and has the children converted to daytime only students. It is once they are back home that Rachel discovers their mother's steamer trunk, carefully packed with all those Singapore gowns, tucked away in a corner of their basement. Both children feel bereft and abandoned. With no way to get in touch with their mother they are left to wonder at the true depths of their abandonment and their parents' deception.
Left to their own devices, Nathaniel and Rachel grow close to The Moth and his case of vaguely criminal friends who frequent the house. Nathaniel especially grows close to a once successful amateur underground boxer nicknamed The Pimlico Darter. While The Moth encourages Nathaniel to get his first real job, The Darter teaches Nathaniel about the back waterways and alleys of the Thames while they smuggle racing dogs of questionable provenance. Un-moored, Nathaniel strikes up a relationship with a girl whose real name he never knows and manages to become close to her while still keeping her at a distance.
And all of this was very interesting and Ondaatje's writing is really fantastic, but then... well the story changes and Nathaniel starts telling the story of his mother, for reasons I don't want to say in this review for risk of spoilers. And given the wonderful distance and mystery Ondaatje spends the first 1/3 of the book creating, the credibility of the knowledge of the last 2/3 is stretched and destroyed by what Nathaniel is able to share about his mother.
The novel is really 1/3 a telling of a child's story from a child's point of view, and 2/3 a telling of a child's story from an adult point of view. It brings up questions and vulnerabilities that are touching and deeply moving and asks us to look at our parents anew from the distance of hindsight and the earned wisdom of adulthood. But it doesn't undo the damage done and the hearts broken in accepting a new perspective.
So all this is to say there were things I really really loved about this book, but when it's all put together it left me wanting a more believable mechanism for getting to the heart of Rose's story without damaging Nathaniel's credibility.
3.5/5 Stars.
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