I was particularly excited to read the latest Ondaatje – I have been having a bit of a contemporary literature slump my hope was that this would smash that to smithereens.

Nathaniel and Rachel are two siblings  left in the care of a family friend nicknamed The Moth.  We follow them as they adjust to a parentless existence and maturation post WWII in London.  The book is deliberately atmospheric and unsettling but not quite to the level of a good thriller.  The reader never quite knows the true motivations of the characters both present and absent – who really was their mother and where is she?  who really is The Moth to them? What does The Darter really do? How do Nathaniel and Rachel fit into the larger scheme?

What I found interesting is that Ondaatje does a good job of presenting the positive and negative view of an action or skill – wartime it’s heroic, post or pre wartime it could be classed as seedy or criminal. No one in the novel is resoundingly good or evil.

While I liked the book I would not include it in  the same class as The English Patient.