Mark Sarvas over at The Elegant Variation scores an apparent coup by providing the first (that I have seen, at any rate) public glimpse and taste of Michael Ondaatje’s forthcoming novel Divisadero, due in April from M&S in Canada, and a month later from Knopf in the US. His post offers a tantalizing (if overexposed) digital photograph of the ARC cover, and the text of the novel’s first page, which concludes with the following lines:

The raw truth of an incident never ends, and the story of Coop and the terrain of my sister’s life are endless to me. They are the sudden possibility every time I pick up the telephone when it rings some late hour after midnight, and I wait for his voice, or the deep breath before Claire will announce herself.

For I have taken myself away from who I was with them, and what I used to be. When my name was Anna.

Which makes me want to read more, of course; patience, they say, is a virtue…

It is fascinating to read through the responses which follow the posting, from avid Ondaatje fans and those less so. From one of the latter I learn the “fact” that Ondaatje is “widely held in Canada to write dialogue with all the skill and realism of a tenth grader”. Widely held? Was there some sort of survey on this that I missed? I can understand and accept that Ondaatje’s writing is not to all tastes but this reader is certainly wetting his lips in anticipation of the new novel.