Jargogled Impressions.

What part of your past, stays in the past? Especially when the past is an open question, marred by the curtailed visibility in the dim light of a post-war period? For Nathaniel, the past remains an open question with unceasing prickles of doubt and curiosity as he grapples with the complex trajectories of his mother’s life. His absent father evokes much less questions for his departure was abrupt and final while his mother returns to haunt him in this adolescent years. Nathaniel, and his sister Rachel are suddenly abandoned by their parents in the care of their house lodger The Moth. As we soon learn, this departure is driven by an uncertain climate of the post-war period when scores needed to be settled between disgruntled parties and spies has the onerous task of managing and dealing with these vendettas. Both of their parents are government employees working on behalf of the allied forces to seal off unsavory behaviors and actions during the war. It is for these responsibilities that Rose, the mother, departs to Singapore and leaves her kid’s precarious childhood hanging with a scruffy lodger.

Much of the novel “Warlight” by Michael Ondaatje reflects the narrator Nathaniel, or Stich about his life as it unfolds in the aftermath of this departure. While the setting changes back and forth between the past and the present, the narrator seems to embody an omnipresent existence as it dives into the early life of his mother. The readers are left to their own devices figuring out whether much of what we learn about Rose is an imaginative reconstruction of his patchy knowledge or it’s what transpired in the real. Where the information is unreliable is the personal lives of these characters. When it comes to the inner workings of the war and the post-war society though, the details and the finer points of research plumb the depths of what is to know about these areas. From greyhound racing to the meandering canals of Thames and the obscure geographical areas of London, the author spares no effort in plumbing the details. Much as what the war has been for the future generations – there’s much more to know about the society and the world at large than the inner lives of people who felt the repercussions vibrate throughout their lives. This book is an attempt at journaling this out. These characters – The Moth, The Dart, Olive, Agnes – we get to know them in detail, but what we do know about them is as superficial and incomplete as they can get. These shadowy, distrusting characters are elusive and secretive, but they are responsible and well-meaning regardless. They are leading a life outside of the four walls they reside, with their minds constantly drifting back and forth between what lies outside their immediate zone of influence and what’s in front of them. Rose’s early life descriptions of this escape into the bigger world via another elusive character called Felon is reflective of her unhidden desire to constantly find a way to escape into the dangerous yet open territories of these open seas where you can hide behind aliases and forget about what makes you, you.

Nathaniel struggles to reconcile this aspect of the people around him. Finding himself employed as a researcher on the same governmental department as his mother, his attempts at uncovering details about his family and his acquaintances hints of a longing to know more and understand. He fails, and so begins his own “revisionist history” that drives much of the history we now read about in the aftermath of the war. This intricate and deftly plotted novel speaks of the sly and stylish narrative style of the author. The sentences are beautifully crafted and reeks of nostalgic, sepia-tinted timber.