Divisadero begins in California in the 1970s with a family of adopted siblings. A father lives with his daughter, Anna, an adopted daughter born the same time as Anna, Claire, and an orphaned boy from the neighborhood called Coop. When Anna and Coop become lovers, the family is torn violently, and abruptly, apart. Twenty years later, Coop is a professional gambler in Lake Tahoe, Claire works for a public defender, and Anna lives in France studying the life of writer Lucien Segura. Coop participates in a gambling scam whose unfolding returns Claire to his life. Anna finds events in Lucien Segura's life mirror her own. This fourth novel from Michael Ondaatje (
The English Patient) has received positive reviews with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette saying, "Exquisitely crafted and imbued with Ondaatje's acutely sensitive intelligence,
Divisadero pulls its readers inside the novelist's craft ('I love the performance of a craft. ... I am interested only in the care taken,' writes Segura) like being inside an intricate pocket watch to learn its movements."
