ect the process of recording History would encompasses the risk ofexposing its biased nature and consequently ruining its illusory objectivity and totality. Patrick's narrative, on the other hand,reflects the process of its construction; Patrick shows the reader how he builds his story out of bits and pieces of memories. Infact, Patrick Lewes' attempt at discovering Clara's and Alice's past parallels the reader's effort at understanding the fictionalcosmos. Clara's past is a mystery with which be becomes obsessed, "Patrick feels he knows nothing of most of Clara's life. Hekeeps finding and losing parts of her, as if opening a drawer to discover another mask" (79). Like Clara, Alice "refused tospeak of the past. Even her stories about Hana's father, though intricate, gave nothing away of herself. She was neverself-centred in her mythologies" (137). Patrick's effort at trying to elucidate Clara's and Alice's mysterious past is actually anattempt at coming to terms with his own story since the stories of these two women are intricately interwoven with his own. Bythe end of the book, which actually is the beginning, Patrick is ready to take responsibility for his own story. This is suggestedby his saying "Lights" (244) meaning that, as Alice one explained to him, it is his turn to get on the stage and wear the skin of alion, i.e., tell his own story. In the Skin of a Lion creates an intimate space where the silenced, marginal and ex-centric author and tell their own stories.Ondaatje's characters comprise a polyphony of voices; even if not all the characters are narrators of their own stories, thereader gets to know their perspectives. He/she has access to the psychic and spiritual life of most of them mainly throughPatrick Lewe's story and through a third person narrator. The stories are fragmented and somehow indeterminate. There aremany silences and absences that call for an active participation on the part of the reader who tries to put ...
