"The Cat's Table"

My first experience with Michael Ondaatje was in high school, when I read "The English Patient" (which I may or may not have done to get a date). I found the book romantic in a very hazy sort of way; sensitive and meaningful and indicative of some great, hard-to-classify desirous part of human nature, but at the same time a tax on my patience for all its meandering and aimlessness.

It's much the same story with his latest, "The Cat's Table." This story about an 11-year-old boy's ocean voyage from Sri Lanka to England is as pretty as it is hard to understand. Ondaatje likes figures who represent something other than a realistic, actual person, and he likes to set these characters adrift in a sea of loosely connected scenes that are nine months pregnant with metaphor and symbolism. Together, those two aspects of his writing give me the feeling that there is something at work in this book that I can't quite grasp, like Ondaatje has something worth expressing but I can't quite see it through the frosted glass of his sentences.

This is less of a criticism than you might imagine. Books should make you think, of course, and I believe there is room for artistry and interpretation in literature. Imaginations need workouts, after all. I just don't like the feeling that, because of some shortcoming on my part, I can't quite fully partake in the experience of this book.