Divisadero

I’ll admit: *Divisadero* frustrated me at first. Ondaatje drops you into the middle of a family’s unraveling with the subtlety of a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The opening act—a violent confrontation on a farm—feels abrupt, almost clinical, and I found myself rewinding Davis’s narration to catch the emotional undertows. But that’s the point. This isn’t a book that explains; it *accumulates*. By the time Anna’s story resurfaces in a French convent, the pieces start to resonate like struck glass. Davis’s performance is masterful in its restraint—she doesn’t cry for the characters, but her voice cracks just enough when Claire whispers, *“We were children then,”* that you feel the weight of what’s unsaid. The audiobook’s pacing mirrors the prose: deliberate, sometimes meandering, with bursts of urgency. Ondaatje’s jumps in time and perspective could feel jarring in lesser hands, but Davis’s steady, almost hypnotic delivery turns them into a strength. That said, the middle act drags—Coop’s sections, while rich in atmosphere, lack the emotional grip of Anna and Claire’s threads. And the ending? Typically Ondaatje: more echo than resolution. But if you’re the kind of listener who savors language over plot, who likes to sit with a book’s ghosts long after it’s over, this is a haunting worth the time. Just don’t expect to leave with neat answers. Expect, instead, to carry its quiet ache with you.