THE CAT’S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart), 273 pages, $32 cloth. Ondaatje reads and is interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on October 29. See listing. Rating: NNN
No one writes poetic prose like Michael Ondaatje. But his gorgeous, sensuous language and piercing insights into the human condition sometimes impede the flow of his latest novel.
The Cat’s Table takes place on a ship called the Oronsay in the early 1950s, heading from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to England, where Michael (we’ll get to that name later), the 11-year-old narrator, is heading to live with his estranged mother.
The title refers to the dining table for the ship’s misfits, who include the narrator, two other preadolescent boys and a handful of single adults. Far removed from the first-class passengers and captain’s table, they’re far more interesting to a burgeoning writer like the narrator. Mr. Mazappa, one of the ship’s musicians, shares exotic stories of Gay Paree, and Mr. Daniels maintains a lush garden in the bowels of the ship.
Also capturing everyone’s imagination is a mysterious prisoner who’s led out for a nightly walk. And then there’s Michael’s beautiful older cousin Emily, whose life will connect with the others’ in unpredictable ways.
Obviously, there are bits of autobiography here, from the narrator’s name to the fact that the author took a similar journey on a ship called the Oronsay in the same era.
The young Michael learns about social hierarchies and the power of storytelling, and Ondaatje gives us another perspective later in the book when the narrator, now a successful writer living in Canada, ponders the mysteries of what happened during the trip.
But is it a memoir? A novel? It seems like some unsatisfying hybrid that never really soars.
The sentences themselves are thrilling, though. Ondaatje lets you see the meaning in how a young woman adjusts the strap on her dress or how someone catching his reflection in a mirror may suddenly see himself move from boyhood to youth.
Starting out, the book seems like a grand adventure reminiscent of something by Kipling or Conrad but with a more knowing take on colonialism and class.
Alas, the pieces never come together into something as fluid and magical as The English Patient or Anil’s Ghost or as funny and touching as his actual memoir, Running In The Family.
