ReviewMichael Ondaatje’s Warlight repays the reader’s patience with a tale of secrecy in post-war London
The author’s seventh novel may be reluctant to reveal its plot, but if literary fiction is your thing, the meditations on memory, narration and perspective will pay dividends
Warlight
by Michael Ondaatje
Knopf
If you dislike the genre commonly known as “literary fiction”, you will probably tire of Michael Ondaatje’s seventh novel, Warlight – or at least its opening half.
Set in post-war London, the story traces the adventures of teenage Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachel: “In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.” A flavour of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and David Copperfield lingers, as Nathaniel and Rachel, now de facto orphans, cavort around a moodily realised demi-monde: illegal greyhound races, smuggling on the Thames, raucous meetings at their former family home.
The cause of the family’s separation seems straightforward. Nathaniel’s father is moving to Singapore after being “promoted to take over the Unilever office in Asia”. He, at least, seems keen, “expanding on the details of their flight on the new Avro Tudor I, a descendant of the Lancaster bomber”. His wife, Rose, who will join him later, is cool but more tender. Having watched her children closely to see how they react to the news, she holds her daughter’s hand “as if she could give it warmth”, then “seeing I [Nathaniel] was confused, she came over to me and ran her fingers like a comb through my hair”.
Nathaniel and Rachel spend a few calm weeks alone with their mother before she leaves, too, hurriedly and ahead of schedule. During this dreamy stretch, the siblings learn that “The Moth”, the house’s quiet, unassuming lodger, is to be their guardian. We are granted a moment of unexpected intimacy between The Moth and Rose, which raises questions that neither Ondaatje nor Nathaniel answer, or not yet.