WARLIGHT by MICHAEL ONDAATJE (2018)

This is yet another novel I bought because of the writer, not because I had read glowing reviews. Michael Ondaatje is the author of The English Patient, recipient of England's Booker Prize in 1992, an extraordinary novel of the aftermath of battle in World War II. Warlight returns to that time period to examine the effects of war on one family, effects which linger long after "peace" has been declared.

Nathaniel, as an adult, remembers the time in 1945 when his mother and father left him and his sister, ostensibly to go overseas for the father's work, in the care of the enigmatic man they called The Moth, As a teenager, he experiences a strange coming-of-age through the odd acquaintances of The Moth, who seemingly take him under their protection. When their mother returns following an episode when Nathaniel and his sister are kidnapped and then rescued, she offers no explanations for the absence of the father or for where she has been.

Nathaniel is recruited by the Foreign Office when he is in his 20s, and begins to research records to gain some sense of what his mother had been involved in during and after the war. Through actual records and his recollections, filled in by his imagination, he arrives at a semblance of the truth of his mother's double life.

This is a very low-key novel. Despite being beautifully written, its emotional impact is negligible. It is definitely a "head" novel, to be appreciated intellectually.