Learning who you are and, perhaps more importantly, who you are meant to be isn't easy. Nathaniel Williams, the young hero of Michael Ondaatje's latest novel, Warlight, spends much of his adolescence and later years pondering this.

The author of the Booker Prize-winning The English Patient, Ondaatje confounds his 14-year-old protagonist from the outset when the boy's parents announce they are going away for a year and that he and his 15-year-old sister, Rachel, will be left in the care of a strange acquaintance known as the Moth, a man they are certain is a criminal. In 1945 England, at the end of World War II, Nathaniel and Rachel must adjust to their newfound parental abandonment and accept the Moth's warning "that nothing was safe anymore."

As narrated through Nathaniel's intimate firsthand perspective, the siblings test their new guardian by rebelling at school. But instead of meeting a stern lashing for their behavior, they are surprised by the Moth's calm understanding and protective demeanor. Equally surprising is the cast of unusual characters associated with the Moth who wind up staying at their house, including Norman Marshall, better known as the Pimlico Darter, a smuggler and racer of greyhound dogs.

The siblings drift further from each other as Nathaniel finds a surrogate father in the Darter and Rachel is drawn closer to the Moth. Events cascade with the surprising return of their mother, Rose. But this isn't a cheerful reunion, as her abandonment and silence about her secretive service in the war have a profound effect on her children and leave more questions than answers—questions that plague Nathaniel well into adulthood and long after his mother's death.

Contemplative and mysterious, Warlight is utterly engrossing.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The multi-award-winning author of The English Patientturns in a new novel both mysterious and dramatic, featuring 14-year-old Nathaniel and older sister Rachel, whose parents leave them in the care of a shadowy and possibly criminal individual called the Moth when they move to Singapore in 1945. The Moth's friends, connected by wartime service, have lots to teach the siblings, who face more confusion when the siblings' mother returns, mum about their father.

In 2017, Ondaatje (The English Patient, The Cat's Table) donated his personal archive, complete with his notebooks and correspondence with Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, to the University of Texas, allowing the public a glimpse into his detailed and intricate approach to narrative, language, and anatomy of his novels. Here, Ondaatje weaves writings and newspaper articles into a narrative about the complexity of family history within the long shadow of World War II. Reflecting on the gaps in his own family history and his mother's mysterious disappearance when he was a teen, Nathaniel searches for a way to better understand his mother's idiosyncrasies. Through archival recordings and interviews with the eccentric characters from his childhood, a mosaic slowly emerges that illuminates not only his mother's story but the forgotten lives buried under the history of war. VERDICT Ondaatje's prose encapsulates readers in the dreariness of London and the claustrophobic confines of Nathaniel's experience, explicating the verbosity of silence that lingers in the haunting aftermath of global war. [See Prepub Alert, 11/6/17.]—Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

The term warlight was used to describe the dimmed lights that guided emergency traffic during London's wartime blackouts. The word aptly describes the atmosphere of this haunting, brilliant novel from Ondaatje (The Cat's Table), set in Britain in the decades after WWII, in which many significant facts are purposely shrouded in the semidarkness of history. The narrator, Nathaniel Williams, looks back at the year 1945, when he was 14 and "our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals." Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachel, are stunned to discover that their mother's purported reason for leaving them was false. Her betrayal destroys their innocence; they learn to accept that "nothing was safe anymore." To the siblings' surprise, however, their designated guardian, their upstairs lodger, whom they call the Moth, turns out to be a kind and protective mentor. His friend, a former boxer nicknamed the Pimlico Darter, is also a kindly guide, albeit one engaged in illegal enterprises in which he enlists Nathaniel's help. The story reads like a nontraditional and fascinating coming-of-age saga until a violent event occurs midway through; the resulting shocking revelations open the novel's second half to more surprises. The central irony is Nathaniel's eventual realization that his mother's heroic acts of patriotism during and after the war left lasting repercussions that fractured their family. Mesmerizing from the first sentence, rife with poignant insights and satisfying subplots, this novel about secrets and loss may be Ondaatje's best work yet. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (May)