Paul Sandip Sandip থেকে 2253 Bukorovtsi, Bulgaria
Amazon kept recommending this to me, probably based on my love of Diversidaro and Anil's Ghost. I figured it was his most famous, so it would probably be better than those two, right? Wrong. This was by far my least favorite Ondaatje book. Why, then did I give it three stars? Because Ondaatje at his worst is still better than most people at their best. The book still had touches of his poetic writing style that causes time to slow and you to notice the magic of details and sounds and music. But he is a little untethered in this book, a little too flimsy. Also, I didn't care at all about the title character (which is interesting because its the exact same reaction I had when I saw the movie). So whenever the book focused on his story (essentially the whole middle) I had trouble focusing and often considered giving up. But I liked the story of Hanna and think she is a wonderful character. I think a book about her that was 30-40% shorter would have been pretty cool.