There are some books that inspire you. Some that touch your heart and warm your soul.

Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero tried to touch me in all the wrong places and it made me angry. It made me curse and it made me hate him and the words he chose to use. (Why so angry, you ask? I’ll tell you why.)

I’ll be frank. I read only up to page 100 of the book so I can’t say I’ve read the whole book. But I read enough of the book to come to the conclusion that I did not like it even one bit!

Reading it, I couldn’t get a feel for the time or place; the scenes seemed to jump to and fro, and everything felt disjointed. I did not enjoy the dialogue either and often times I felt lost as to who was speaking.

This book just felt pretentiously artsy and labouriously forced, as if a confusing and directionless storyline could be equated with prose or literary genius. “Try-hard artsy” is how I would describe this book. Painful on the mind and I truly hated it.

I have never read anything by Ondaatje. I’ve seen The English Patient and thought it was ok, so-so. I doubt I’ll be picking up another book by Ondaajte anytime soon.

Only thing I liked about this book was the cover, and that in itself is a lesson to me to never ever again judge a book by its cover.