Divisadero (2007)

Anna and her adopted sister, Claire, grow up on an idyllic California farm with their taciturn father, riding horses through the rolling hills and watching meteor showers in Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero. But when teenage Anna starts sleeping with Coop, a young hired hand, their father violently lashes out, irrevocably dividing both the family and this annoyingly elliptical novel. Anna runs away and becomes a scholar; Coop runs away and takes up poker. Instead of boring deeper into the lives of these blurry characters, Ondaatje (The English Patient) abruptly launches into the story of a dead French writer. The juxtaposition probably means something, but it's hard to motivate yourself to figure out what. B-