Romance

Few books are felt as much as read, but The English Patient falls into this category. Like the film, it is hauntingly beautiful, but for slightly different reasons. The story of people haunted by love and war, their damaged souls converging at a villa in Italy, remains, but the focus and method in which the story is told on paper is filled with poetic passages, and stunning beauty.

The passages are like water moving to and fro over rocks, shifting back and forth in time so that the beauty beneath can still be seen, but as a shimmering mirage in the desert. It is a strange instance where it is almost recommended that you see the film first in order to appreciate more clearly in your mind the characters as their stories unfold.

Whereas the film focused more on the burned Almasy and his memories of the unending African desert, where he would meet the enigmatic and beautiful Katherine Clifton, sealing the fate which would leave him a charred and hollow shell of his former self, Hanah is the focal point of Ondaatje's lovely poetic prose in the novel. You can almost feel the ghosts hovering over each character as Ondaatje paints a masterpiece with words rather than a brush.

Deeply romantic and lyrical, it is the same story as told in the film, but a more impressionistic and less linear portrait of love and loss. The book is like a delicate flower just beneath the water's surface, its beauty evident but achingly kept just out of reach. The film brought the flower into the sun so we could enjoy its texture and fragrance in more visceral fashion. Both are magnificent, just a different picture of the same flower.

If you loved the film, you must read the book. It is a hauntingly beautiful novel different from anything else you'll ever read. Literary fiction can often be dry and unrewarding, a lot of beautiful words and lovely phrases meant to impress us, but all too often leaving us cold and disinterested. Such is not the case here. This is a perfect storm of prose and story achieved only once by Ondaatje. A masterwork of rich and evocative prose that will surely touch the heart, an organ of fire. ( )

This is a very beautifully written book, with the lyrical style that was all the rage in the 90s. However, I also found it rather uneven in terms of plotting, with some of the sections being compelling and others rather dull. I found I couldn't relate to all of the characters, either. Some of them, such as Hana and Kip, were very interesting and revealed themselves gradually, while others, such as Caravaggio and the English patient himself, were pretty unlikely and only became more so as the book went on.

And despite its rhythm and descriptive force, the prose is occasionally incomprehensible. I think this was partly because many of the insights offered by the author are not that interesting, or even necessarily true. So I found that I wasn't understanding the sections which were meant to have the greatest emotional impact and that when I slowed down to pick them apart the rewards were not great enough to justify the effort.

I suspect that readers who are able to buy into the romance on offer here might find the book much more rewarding than I did. ( )

3.8 no 3.5

Ciertamente no es la película que yo conocía y reconozco que estoy siendo injusta al querer compararlas. De hecho siempre que leo un libro que fue adaptado al cine o veo una película basada en un libro parto de ese principio: no compararlos y no caer en el gastado argumento de que el libro es mejor que la película, pero en esta ocasión, mientras leía no podía dejar de pensar en la película.

Minghella hizo un gran trabajo de adaptación al cine y Ondaatje ha hecho una historia plagada de poesía, de encuentros y desencuentros.

Me gustó, que no los confundan esas 3.8 estrellas. ( )

I kept reading it thinking that somewhere, sometime a point would be made. It didn't happen. Romantic? Maybe due to the acting in the movie. I would not use romantic to describe this book. Words that came to my mind upon reading this book: dysjunctive; dysfunctional; meaningless; bland. I had to read the movie synopsis to get a sense of what this story was all about. ( )

Some lovely scenes, some lovely sentences, but lots of beautiful writing just for the sake of beautiful writing annoyed me after a while. I yelled (in my mind, so as not to scare the dog), "Get on with the story already!" multiple times. --> I'll leave this sentence here, although my opinion of the book has changed.

Read my full review on my blog at http://www.wildmoobooks.com/2017/02/the-english-patient-1992-by-michael.html ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Famous book, famous movie. Glad to have read; never have seen. Love and compassion, in the midst of the traumas of war. Should probably read again." ( )

The action was a little slow through out the book. Identified with Kip and could see how he felt betrayed at the end with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. Went against everything he was trying to do with dismantling mines. The English patient was just a victim through out and held the other characters in place until the end. Just a good light read. ( )

Absolutely luminous. Ondaatje describes a world recovering from war through the four very human, very real characters past their points of unraveling. Everything is ruined, all hearts and minds have been beaten down if not totally destroyed, and the people in the book seem to wander numbly around one another in their affliction and shock, recalling the horrors of 1942 and the years leading up to it. Grief and emergence are two main themes of the novel, which comes off as anti-war and anti-colonialism. Through the memories of each of these four characters, the epic scope and political drama that makes war so attractive and compelling is deconstructed through the specific wreckage of the individuals involved.
Hana, who accepts the depths of her madness rather than cope with the loss of her father, her unborn child, her own childhood, her empathy for the suffering of others. Caravaggio descends into a morphine-riddled cynicism and is last seen balanced on a line of hemp just above the tree line in the middle of a storm. Kip's own delusions about empire, loyalty, and safety that he built upon the deceitful guide of the colonial powers who control his homeland keep him at arms length from the world. And the English patient's love of the sparse and holy deserts are belittled and extirpated by the great powers of the Second World War; how a person can lose his identity through loss of place. Everything is in ruins throughout the novel, never built up, never whole again. Ondaatje's prose is tender but muscular, almost opaque. The wavering between chronologies is as unbalanced as the minds of his disintegrating characters, is well suited to the kind of ringing in the ears after bombs are dropped. As much as he writes about love, I feel like he uses it as an end to explore lack, and grief, and madness.

So. Fucking. Good. ( )

I love beautiful writing, but this is just pretentious....maybe I'll watch the movie. ( )

This book is a literary and emotional experience. If I had read it a year ago I would have probably given two stars or less. The language and flow are heavy as molasses at times and some descriptions are off, but it really speaks to anyone who experienced love, loss and grief. It also raises question about the moral and emotional cost of war.

The story plays in an Italian villa that brings together four broken characters weaving their daily interactions with their back stories. The badly burnt "English Patient", who is cared for by the war nurse Hana, are joined by David Carvaggio and Kip (the bomb expert or sapper as he is called in the novel). As these characters take refuge and comfort in each other's company their pain and grief unfolds in memories. We get to know especially the Patient who is not what he seems to be and who grieves a lost love. Then we know Kip the young Indian, who turned out to be a brilliant sapper although thrust unwillingly into this "white-man's" war. Then there are the two Canadians the young Hana, the war nurse, grown up and old before her time although we see flashes of her childish spirit, and David Carvaggio the mysterious character, who was used as an agent or "thief" in the war, and ended up punished badly for it.

The thrust of the novel is its emotional power and how the author dealt with the fragile human condition, exposed in the harsh and ambiguous moral landscape of war, death, and betrayal. It is a compelling read worthy of revisiting. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3725035.html

I found it really evocative of the times and places of the settings, and liked the integration of the plotlines as representing the healing of the protagonist. But again I found myself curiously unmoved by it. I am a bit surprised that the book won the Booker and the film the Oscar. But there's no accounting for taste, and I know mine is sometimes a minority opinion. ( )

Michelle's favorite book!
( )

When this movie came out, I was in college, and was right along with Elaine Benes in absolutely hating it. As a result, I didn't have much interest in reading Michael Ondaatje's novel. However, it's on the 1,001 list, which is very fortunate, because I completely enjoyed the novel (and assume I would also enjoy the film now that I'm older and wiser.)

The characters really came off the page and the story was very gripping even though I knew where it all was going. Really, just a wonderful book reading experience because of the way the prose just cozies up to you. ( )

Even though this novel is set squarely after WWII has ended, it still has the same feeling and tone as Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Both novels focus so closely on their small cast of characters that the outside world of the war is largely forgotten in lieu of exploring personal experience. Even less of the war effort is focused on in this novel than in Corelli, but the chosen interludes fromm Kip (the Indian bomb-defuser/sapper) are well placed in the narrative to break us out of the potentially monotonous orbits of the cast through the villa. I also really enjoyed the cast overall, because there was more diversity and breadth than I expected from a WWII narrative. ( )

This felt like a much longer book than it was. At times it was a bit of a slog, I guess because the characters and setting just didn't connect much with me. Sections revolving around Kirpal I found the most appealing, and by the end, I could see why it's considered a good book, but on the whole it just didn't do much for me. Ondaatje is 0 for 2 for me so far. I've got another one queued up, and I hope I like it more than I did this one and Divisadero. ( )

I'm reading all the Booker Prize winners www.methodtohermadness.com

I am so glad that the Booker Project led me to reread this book. I must have read it first shortly after it came out. What I remembered: a fascination with words, maps, and underground places. Kip and Hana’s slowly blossoming love.

What I hadn’t remembered but discovered on the second reading: the many literary allusions; the rejection of nationality; the violence of the relationship between the title character, whose name is Almasy, and Katherine; the maturation of the women, both Katherine and Hana.

The movie, as I remember it, focuses on the passion between Almasy (played by my nominee for Official Actor of the Booker Prize, Ralph Fiennes) and Katherine, played by Kristin Scott Thomas. However, I found that the book explored many other passions and relationships in more depth: Almasy’s passion for the desert; Kip’s love for his adoptive British “family”; Caravaggio’s love for the grown-up Hana that he first knew as a child. Even Almasy and fellow explorer Madox’s friendship seems to outweigh the affair. The novel ends with parallel scenes from Kip’s and Hana’s lives, not Almasy’s and Katherine’s.

I’ve read three Ondaatje novels now: this one, The Cat’s Table, and Anil’s Ghost, which I listened to, read by Alan Cumming with his lovely accent. I liked them all, but The English Patient is undoubtedly the best, in my view. All are concerned with issues of national origins and adopted countries, as Ondaatje was born to Dutch and South Asian parents in Sri Lanka, then later chose to live in Canada.

The book is brilliant for telling such a complex story so beautifully in such a short space. Don’t get me wrong, I love long books and series in which I can lose myself for several days or even weeks, but there is something I admire about a tale told in such a concise yet intricate fashion. I can still remember my imaginary visions of the Italian villa from my first reading, it is so vividly depicted. At the same time, the plotline shifts forward and backward in an experimental fashion, with Almasy’s morphine-enhanced memories.

This novel was chosen as the Best of the Bookers in celebration of the prize’s fifty-year anniversary, and so far I must agree. The Remains of the Day would be my choice for runner-up, another book that slowly but concisely reveals a complex story. ( )

I appreciate how history and narrative converge and forced me as a reader to question everything I thought I knew about the story. Beautifully written, haunting, and an eloquent commentary on how we construct history. ( )

Beautiful writing that takes your breath away. Four individuals connected and scarred by war come together in the abandoned villa to seek peace and healing. Their story is revealed bit by bit, so you have to pay attention or you may have to re-read it, which I almost did. ( )

Four stuck in limbo
waiting for the war to end
new horrors to come. ( )

**The English Patient** by *Michael Ondaatje* is a lyrical, slow, pain-ridden book about the trauma and separation and surreal life of people in and after WW2. It's not really my kind of book, but it wasn't an unpleasant read, either. ( )

“Kip walks out of the field where he has been digging, his left hand raised in front of him as if he has sprained it.

He passes the scarecrow for Hana’s garden, the crucifix with its hanging sardine cans, and moves uphill towards the villa. He cups the hand held in front of him with the other as if protecting the flame of a candle. Hana meets him on the terrace, and he takes her hand and holds it against his. The ladybird circling the nail on his small finger quickly crosses over onto her wrist.

She turns back into the house. Now her hand is held out in front of her. She walks through the kitchen and up the stairs.

The patient turns to face her as she comes in. She touches his foot with the hand that holds the ladybird. It leaves her, moving onto the dark skin. Avoiding the sea of white sheet, it begins to make the long trek towards the distance of the rest of his body, a bright redness against what seems like volcanic flesh." ( )

Mr. Ondaatje writes this story using languid, sensual snapshots. ( )

Very well written exploration of war, death, love. The patient is being cared for in Italy by a war-weary nurse. A sapper and a mysterious stranger are part of the interesting collection of people around the patient. ( )

I can see why some people really dislike it but to me this books was brilliant. There were no sharp edges in this book, it was all fading in and out of stories, giving a taste here and there just to whet the appetite and then moving on to the next tidbit. ( )