Customer Reviews

The English Patient

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Set at the end of World War II in an Italian villa, The English Patient brings together four unlikely characters: Hana, an emotionally-wounded army nurse who refuses to leave her last patient even when ordered to evacuate; Caravaggio, a friend of Hana's father, thief and spy, a man who is drawn to Hana in ways he cannot articulate; Kip, an Indian sapper loyal to the British military who disarms bombs by day, loves Hana by night; and the mysterious burned invalid, the English patient of the title, who unites them all in unexpected ways. Told in poetic, often elliptical language, this novel demands to be savored instead of read voraciously. The images are just as likely to be visually precise as they are inexplicable. Unlike the movie, which concentrates on the love story between the English patient and the woman he loved, the novel is more about the confusing impulses that lead to both passion and danger in all the characters.

Serious readers of literature should read this novel more than once, for its subtleties, imagery, and the force of its lyricism. More casual readers may find it tough reading, not because the language is inaccessible but because of the way Ondaatje backs into his story. Those who stick with the author's poetic turns will be well-rewarded by the end.

There was a time, not too long ago, when you could sit in a cafe and hear the words The English Patient within the half hour, either that or see someone with their head ducked into the pages of the book between slurps of coffee. Of course this popularity made me wary of the book and the movie and I formed ready stereotypes and turned my attention elsewhere. Then the paperback copies of the book started to come out with the actors faces on it, and I have vowed never to by a book that brandishes its connection to the movie version of the story - call me a grumpy old man, but it seems that the book was the book before it was the movie and I'd much rather form my own visual and dramatic accompaniment to the text without seeing the face of some actor. (Disclaimer: I might love the movie if I actually saw it, but that's not the point!)
And yet, poetic justice prevails. On a slow winter morning at my coffee shop, I looked warily over at a copy of The English Patient that someone had left on the shelf months ago. In fact, I didn't even think that I was picking up "The English Patient", and instead looked to the merits of the book's fine author Michael Ondaatje. I thought of Anil's Ghost, which I enjoyed, and Coming through Slaughter, and thought it might do me good to start off my day with a glance at the inspired prose of a great writer. Later, I would read about Hana reading to the English patient: "When she begins a book she enters through stilted doorwas into large courtyards. Parma and Paris and India spread their carpets." In the first paragraph of this book, we enter into The Villa, following Hana into the room where the English patient lies. "She turns into the room which is another garden - this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters..." We are introduced to a relationship, and through the relationship, to a place, and through the place, to a war, and through the war, to the strange lurches of a civilization in a time of great change and to individuals trying to situate themselves amidst the absurdly ordered chaos of it all. Once you fall under the spell of the story, you are left to dream, and to be changed forever by the experience.

"The English Patient" is, without a doubt, one of my very favorite books. It is lush, beautiful and gorgeous. And the glory of it is that it got that way with fine, first-rate writing. You won't find any gimmicks or ... tricks here.

Unlike the movie, the book begins in war-torn Italy (1944) where we encounter Hana, a Canadian nurse and a horribly burned man known only as, "the English patient." Alone in an isolated, abandoned convent, Hana stays behind when her friends move on to care for the dying English patient. Hana is a rare individual and truly caring. She spends her days reading to the English patient from the volume of Herodotus that was found with him and, when his pain becomes too great, she injects him with morphine.

Hana and the English patient aren't alone long, however. A mysterious man named Caravaggio soon arrives and it becomes clear that he has an agenda all his own. Nevertheless, it is Caravaggio who succeeds with the English patient where others have failed. This trio is soon joined by a Sikh named Kip, a man who will play a role in Hana's life, just as she will play a role in his.

Eventually, of course, we learn all about the English patient, who really isn't English at all, but a Hungarian count named, Almasy. We learn where he's been and why and how he came to be so horribly burned. We learn about the great love of his life, a love that sadly, was doomed from the very start.

This is a book that is told on two levels and contains two love stories. One takes place in the past and the other takes place in the present. While Hana's story is told in the present tense, it is not as involving or as intense as is the love story involving Almasy that takes place in the past. I think this is because Hana and her lover are not as fully-realized as are Almasy and his lover, though Hana is by far the most sympathetic character in the book.

The character of Caravaggio is as mysterious as is the English patient. We do learn about him, however, and about his mysterious connection to Almasy. The stories of Hana and Caravaggio are heartbreaking and heartbreakingly beautiful.

"The English Patient" is a quiet love story, one told without the necessity of melodrama or "fireworks." However, it is one that cuts deep, and one that any reader will remember long after the book is finished. This is a story that simply rings with universal chords...of love, of loss, of sadness, of betrayal.

If I have one quibble with this book, it is with the denouement. I didn't really want to know what happened to some of the characters in the distant future. I wanted Ondaatje to leave a little for my imagination. But he didn't and that's his choice. It certainly didn't ruin the book for me.

The writing in "The English Patient" is lyrical and beautiful, though spare. Ondaatje is first and foremost a poet, and it shows. This is a book that flows, that cascades, that washes over you with its words.

I first read "The English Patient" years ago and I haven't forgotten a single detail. "The English Patient" is a book that captures your heart and never lets go. It is a book that will haunt you with its beauty and with its sadness for many years to come, perhaps even for the rest of your life. Yes, it's that good.

The English Patient written by Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje's stunning novel takes place as the Second World War is ending. The author creates four unforgettable characters and brings them together in an abandoned and damaged Italian villa as the war retreats around them. It is their lives and memories that "The English Patient" follows and explores.

Hana is a young Canadian nurse and her late father's friend, Caravaggio, is a professional thief and Allied spy who was brutally maimed during the war. Kip, a Sikh "sapper", lives on the edge of death in the fields of bomb disposal.

And the central force around which the action spins is the mysterious title character - the English Patient, the nameless, burnt victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates the book.

They are all fascinated by this dying man, burnt beyond recognition and who refuses to unveil his name or country of origin. His story, set in the deserts of North Africa, unfolds through a series of flashbacks taking place in the abandoned villa. Through the rest of the novel, Hana, Caravaggio and Kip try to discover his true identity while he tells them stories of his past.

"The English Patient" is fabulous. It is all very poetic, the plot, the descriptions. It transforms your view of the world, turning it into a glorious, magical place that does not exist or does it? The author I read on the inside of the cover was first a poet and then became a novelist. And this novel is filled with page upon page of poetry, though it is written in novel form. "The English Patient" is perhaps the most beautiful novel I have ever read.

When I started to read the book I was a bit surprised that it was written in a third person. But later I discovered that the third person narrative voice make some kind of justice to all the characters.

Though I have to admit that it was not a very easy book to read. The author's language is lyrical and beautiful, but it requires an investment of energy from the reader especially from one whose mother tongue is not English. Sometimes the lyrical language like steels away your breath so that it becomes hard to follow the plot.

I strongly want to recommend this book and then trust me and take as long as you can to finish it. Discover every single phrase of it because it is worth it.

I want to end this book report with a sentence from the book. "That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice. I wanted to hear nothing more." This breathtaking sentence really hit me and stayed with me for several days.

The cover copy of my version of "The English Patient" indicates that the book within is "A rare and spellbinding web of dreams." Even though I'm not sure what that means, strangely, I agree. Ondaatje's language is lyrical enough to transport one to his dream world, a world of half-glimpsed comprehension, passion and sensuality. His descriptions of the world he has created are certainly dream-like; when the English Patient first emerges from the wrecked plane, he is afire, his headed sporting "antlers of flame". From that moment, I belonged to Ondaatje.

Narrative is an important part of a novel. But if you like yours linear, you will be disappointed here. "The English Patient" flashes backwards and back to the present, rarely giving one warning or even a way to tell where we are, chronologically. It is a quilt of a book, much like the patient's copy of Herodotus' "The Histories", which has been woven from the original text and additional maps, notes & drawings. It is at once what it appears to be and something different, something organic, alive and changing with us as we read it.

Most of the characters are fascinating. Caravaggio, the thumbless thief, who, naked, once stole a photograph of himself from the woman who took it. Kip, the Sikh "sapper", or demolitions expert, who spends his days communing with the bombs that surround their villa. Hana, the nurse, who finds solace and support in books, to the point of rebuilding a portion of the staircase by nailing heavy books in place (If that isn't an incredible metaphor, I don't know what is).

Then there is the patient himself, burnt black, quietly awaiting death and reflecting on its nature. For much of the novel, we don't know who he is, except a reminder of death and betrayal. This is barely his story at all; he is merely a catalyst. Without him, we have the idea that the other three would never have come together,would never have discovered their identities.

For that's what this book is, an examination of the nature of identity. Who are we, when the lights are out? Is it only the presence of other people that makes us who we are? Michael Ondaatje isn't telling, rather, he leaves it up to us.

I made it halfway through this book before giving up on it. As an avid reader, I seldom put a book down. I just couldn't find anything to compel me to finish this one. At the mid-point, I still felt that the characters were being introduced - endlessly. In a character study, I expect to know something about what is going on in the heads of the characters, but aside from brief flashbacks inserted randomly into the text, you are told nothing about what is in the characters minds. Occasionally, they are said to look mournful, or pensive, etc, but however picturesque the descriptions are, they are no substitute for mental activity or plot. If the author's intention was to paint an outside portrait of the survivors of a war, that was accomplished. There is a strange other-worldly disconnected feel to the characters. You can feel their isolation from world; but it makes for a one-note read. There is a patina of unreality to their world that reads almost like a fairy tale - but one where nothing happens. The characters seem to be stuck in an amber of PTSD. Most of the book to the halfway point was just very nicely written descriptions of their day to day life. How they bathed, what they ate, which room they slept in, etc. Basically, this book was like watching a silent drama. You could see what they were doing, and what they were remembering, but there was no significant action going on, and no way to get in their heads. It was kind of like trying to do psychoanalysis on a picture.

It's hard to believe Ondaatje wasn't inspired, above all else, by "Wuthering Heights," especially in his characterization of a Katherine and Almasy whose obsession with love as possession is a latter-day equivalent of the undifferentiated passion of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. And Ondaatje's related but contrasting pair of lovers, Hana and Kip, appear to occupy a place comparable with Bronte's Cathy Linton and Hareton, whose recognition of each other's separateness at least holds forth the promise of a relationship between two individuals.

But Ondaatje surprises us. His Kip and Hana finally retreat to the boundaries of nationality, race, and past traditions, reclaiming for themselves as much identity as such markers are capable of offering. In "The English Patient" Almasy plays both the roles of Heathcliff and Hareton. It is the latter who is redeemed from the primitive through the books Cathy finally shares with him, teaching him to separate himself from the primeval natural principle and to love. Almasy learns much the same from his Kathy, who shows him the true meaning of Herodotus, of history, of words themselves. He learns he cannot remain a free agent, avoiding responsibility and "ownership," because without incurring debts to another person, agency is pointless and freedom is an illusion. Almasy must lose his fabricated identity--symbolized by the "features," or mere markers, of history, the desert, and the physical body--in order to gain his soul, which turns out to be Kathy.

When Almasy makes good on his promise and returns to the cave, the necrophilia scene (as subtle as any in all literature--compare its obvious counterpart in "Wuthering Heights") is an electric and electrifying intercourse of tongues, an exchange of lying words for a shared language. Kathy's sacrifice in taking into herself the old words of Almasy is her answer to his own sacrifice, an exorcism of the qualified, secretive language Almasy had formerly insisted on calling love. With that act Almasy is transformed from "demon lover" to lover, from a desert nomad and recorder of landmarks to co-author of and mutual participant in a new "text," an authentic discourse of love between two independent people who ultimately relate as one.

To those who distrust the story's representations of history, remember that the story itself questions all such representations. Which is not to say it's a "romance." It's a love story--above all, a love "history," and as such it rings as true as any history since Emily Bronte's.

I'm only 13 years old, and I love this book. I couldn't put it down. It just draws you in, forcing you to read more. I can't get enough of it. I can't believe there are people that actually hate this book. It's not hard to read (as some people said) and very interesting. Some people who wrote the reviews for this book said that a younger person couldn't understand or relate to this book. If I can, then any kid my age could.

I admit it. It took me quite a long time to finally purchase the book, due to the fact that it just sounded too depressing for even my dark soul to stomach. When I finally did read it, in 1993, I not only loved it with every fiber of my being, but also found myself drawing bits of the sentiments expressed about love, such as "seas move away, why not lovers?". In short, the novel has been more than just a story, but instead has served as a bible, or at least as a substitute for Prozac. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend a lcecture given by Michael Ondaatje at the University of Texas at Austin in 1995, and when I joined the throng to have my paperback copy signed (the edition with the beautiful Beaton photo) Ondaatje took a disdainful look at my raggedly book, & asked me what the hell I had done with it. I was forced to admit that I read it in the shower & the bath. I also asked him a question regarding the word "felhommny"! ; or the dusk of graves. He was as enigmatic in his answer as the passage is in the story. I think the novel has a great deal to teach individuals coping with the realities of a post-modern world: our survival as a PLANET depends on our sucess in being able to transcend nationalities/ethnic identity( and by this I do not mean that people should not be free to express/live their cultures) and in our ability to make the most of the present. The movie was inadequate in that it ignored Kip's significance as the moral center of the novel, and also for the fact that it could not resist simplifying the war into what Americans can understand easily: the good guys (i.e. Americans) against the evil German (Nazi's: not that they weren't abhorently evil, that is a fact beyond dispute). But the end of the novel is a strong statement about what the browm and black people of this planet have faced since WWII.

The English Patient lacked all but one of the characterics that make for a truely great novel. It's characters were lackluster and one dimensional, it's plot was missing, it's pace was slow and plodding, and it had no ending. It did have some lovely prose. For me, lovely prose just isn't enough.