Title: Warlight
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 290 pages; 9 hours (audiobook)
Level of difficulty: 3/5 Dictionaries
Rating: 2/5 Stars
Brief Introduction:
A vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire. It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz and years of war. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time.
Review:
The author deserves credit for experimenting with this writing style that reads like a memoir. The main character speaks of significant events in his life and the lives of those close to him, often imagining how things would have been – but yet telling the readers what had happened because he is the narrator.
However, it was not that engaging. I got bored a few times and wanted to stop reading/for it to end. I think it might be because the plot was relatively flat. There was not much development. We as readers aren’t incentivized to find out more about what happened to various characters in the book, for which Nathaniel is investigating because we don’t get to build much of a connection nor understanding of said characters.
TW: Death
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