The book begins with motherless Anna and her adopted sister Claire growing up on a farm in Northern California. Anna has a love affair with Coop, the brooding farmhand, until the two are discovered by her enraged father. This sets off the first act of brutality and Claire’s subsequent part as caretaker, a role she reprises years later when she encounters Coop as a cardsharp in Tahoe. The book splits and multiplies several more times, with a glancing mention of the titular street, “the dividing line between San Francisco and the fields of the Presidio.” We return to Anna, a translator on a farm in France owned by the late poet Lucien Segura. Then we diverge into the writer’s past, which resonates with themes that dominate the previous story lines. All of the book’s plot threads dwell on desire and loss.

Anna might as well be speaking for Ondaatje when she declares her affinity for the villanelle, a form that “refuses to move in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion.” The premise of revolving sagas is intriguing, and the pastoral descriptions of California and France are lovely, but for a book with so many narrative shifts, it’s actually a static read. Long passages of plot summary slow the action to a torpid pace, and the characters are less like fleshed-out people than emanations of the authorial voice. — Liz Brown