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In the Skin of a Lion
- Narrated by: Tom McCamus
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
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Summary
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What listeners say about In the Skin of a Lion
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Earnest
- 02-08-18
Insights, magic, history embroidery in webs..
What a listen!
Being the third Ondaatje novel in a row, I now feel I have learnt so much more about the world..yet I am one of its elders.
It does not matter when they were written. They speak of such now events ( its quite, quite unnerving-even for a historian) yet they are seemingly unanchored.
Gifts I had somehow missed until now.
2 people found this helpful
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- Joshua
- 25-02-18
superb
it is rare when literature and historical fiction mesh so beautifully. Ondaatje is a master of atmosphere and character, so this small masterpiece does not disappoint.
132 people found this helpful
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- Joe Kraus
- 07-02-19
Lush but Often Bewildering Prequel
When I think of Ondaatje’s work – and all I’ve read before this is the marvelous The English Patient – I think of internal experience. I think of narrators who are trapped in a bed or confined to an abandoned hospital, or recuperating from amputated thumbs. I think, that is, of characters in the midst of reflection.
As I look at his method of narration, though, it’s actually steeped in the external. As he writes, he pans across landscapes. He gives us lush descriptions that become almost cinematic. In this book in particular, I often found myself lost in the larger story, but I never felt bored. I was always confident I was in the hands of someone who knew how to make words bring scenes (and, implicitly, characters) to life.
It’s a challenging method. Part of the inspiration of The English Patient is that it’s claustrophobic. Characters recall experiences of vast spaces and of epic love, but they don’t get to leave the scene of the hospital for the setting of the story’s present tense. That novel, tangled as is it, has a clear and tight focus. Everything points to the experience of our nurse and patient who, without quite knowing it, sit as the culmination of a number of great emotional arcs.
Skin of a Lion, though even shorter, is expansive in its scenery and in its setting. We go from the wilds of Canada in the days of timber empire, to the building of Toronto’s sewer system, to the birth of a radical workers’ movement in the years before World War I. It doesn’t have the same inspired focus of The English Patient. It’s never boring and always reflective of great passion, but it spins in different directions.
As an elevator pitch, this is an inspired plot: a young man who learns dynamiting from his father goes to Toronto, contributes to the great physical work of building the city, becomes radicalized through a betrayed love and from seeing the greed of the city’s capitalists, and determines to assassinate his arch enemy by swimming through the very sewer tunnels he helped build.
Given Ondaatje’s method, though, I rarely saw that plot as it unfolded. (In fact, I have to acknowledge various on-line sources as helping me sort out how one scene connected to another.) I loved the reading experience of being caught in the lush exterior reflections of the characters, but I was generally confused about how they combined. I respect the ambition behind all this – as a scholar of American multi-ethnic literature, I admire Ondaatje’s seeming goal to celebrate the mix of immigrant labor that made the city, and I recognize the philosophical claim that, when dismantling the master’s house, one cannot use the master’s tools. That is, I think I understand that he’s challenging conventional chronological narrative as a means of critiquing our received history. Still, he’s asking a lot of us. He writes brilliantly but here, in what turns out to be a prequel to The English Patient, he never lets his story cohere.
I’m all in for more Ondaatje, and I do recommend this one, but be prepared for a challenging ride once you begin.
4 people found this helpful
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- Debra Corea
- 30-08-18
I tried, it failed
Since I live on the other side of Lake Ontario, I thought In the Skin of a Lion might be interesting. And since it was a short listen I thought I'd give it a try. I guessed wrong. I plugged away, day after day, an uphill slog, but it only got worse. Have to return it. I agree with the other reviewers that panned this. A waste of time.
4 people found this helpful
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- Celeste Albers
- 08-08-18
A rare gem of a book
Beautiful, intelligent, mesmerizing
I pity the person who cannot appreciate such a masterpiece
The different threads form a rope that twists and turns, doubles back and then returns to wrap around you
Perfectly performed by Tom McCamus
There are scenes that will never leave me
6 people found this helpful
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- Breakaway Farm
- 23-09-18
Narration Pulled This Book Down
This is a book about the retelling of individual events until they are shaped and cohere into a story. The story is not what is recorded in historical archives but rather an evolving narrative woven from the parts the teller chooses to share. The title, "In the Skin of a Lion" harkens to the promise made by Gilgamesh when his closest friend, Enkidu, has died: to grow his hair like a lion and wander, ostensibly to tell his friend's story to all who will listen.
The style is purposely fragmented in the beginning leaving the reader to find connections and begin to stitch together a narrative. OK. This trophe is used successfully by many novels. It requires additional work on the part of the reader but can lead to great rewards when done well.
Alas, if you are listening to this Kindle edition and have not read the book before, you'll never know how big the reward might be for all the up front work. The reader has chosen to make book's early fragmentation the cornerstone of his delivery. Every sentence is read as a separate data point with a rising or (mostly) lowered intonation to isolate the sentence from the one that follows.
There is no flow in sections that have a legitimate narrative flow. Dialogs are hard to follow since everyone has the identical voice and chopped speech pattern. Instead of being lyrical (which what I think the reader intended) the style inevitably leads to monotony.
In the end, I liked the book. But I'll never know if I would have LOVED it unless I go back to read In the Skin of a Lion on the page where I can experience it with a more natural rhythm and pacing.
2 people found this helpful
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- NK
- 13-08-18
No dialog he and I don't care
Despite the undoubtedly pretty language on offer here this novel is almost 95% narrative and provides no avenue for the reader to care about the characters. Not caring, I often tuned out the book, which made it impossible to follow what was going on. I'm afraid this is another case where being told a book is Art means reading it is going to be unpleasant. Give me dialogue so I can see your characters myself instead of the narrator droning on and telling, telling, telling.
4 people found this helpful
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- Nancy
- 02-08-18
Not for entertainment
This story was horrible. If you’re looking for an enjoyable listen, this is not it. I was able to purchase it for just a few bucks and forced myself to listen to the entire book. I have almost 300 books in my audible library and have listened to them all. There are two books that I couldn’t finish listening too because they were so bad. I should be able to say there are three books in my library that I couldn’t listen to. Instead I forced myself to listen to this in its entirety. . I kept thinking that the story would all come together before the ending, it didn’t. I have no idea what people listened to that though this book was ok, and those that thought it was good are just lying and want you to waste your time like they did. This story never comes together, it is just a bunch of random thoughts put to words. A norm in this book is that there are story lines that are started and then left hanging. An example is when a Nun falls off a bridge and is saved by a man who gets hurt and you learn all about him and then the story changes and you never hear about them again… Bottom line do not waste your time, even if you get the book free. Any time wasted listening to this book is time that not only will you not get back you will be tormented with frustration the entire time you are listening.
10 people found this helpful
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- JrAtch
- 27-10-18
Classically Ondaatje
Quietly told in Ondaatje style, this novel weaves lives through each other during a time in history that will never be relived. A sum much more than it's parts, we get to experience relationships outside our own limitations and finally reach a time of content ment.
1 person found this helpful
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- VCJ
- 06-10-18
You must be engaged
Beautifully written and narrated – – mesmerizing really, but it requires your full attention. If you go with the flow you will be rewarded.
1 person found this helpful
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- Barbara
- 06-08-18
Even better than I remembered...
I read this book way back, soon after reading The English Patient. I could not and cannot get enough of Ondaatje's writing. It is magical, the series of visual images as haunting as a dream, the characters intriguing, complicated.
What struck me as I listened was how well such images and the characters had stayed vivid in my memory, after decades. The narration is also excellent. I have listened twice now, and will probably do so again, because inhabiting Ondaatje's world for a few hours is the best antidote to ....listening to the news.
1 person found this helpful