The English Patient

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The English Patient Pub. Date: 3/1/1901 Publisher: Sagebrush Education Resources

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Overview

Michael Ondaatje's three previous novels have each been met with the highest praise: for their startling narrative inventiveness, the richness of their imagery and emotion, and the spellbinding quality of their language. When In the Skin of a Lion was published in 1987, Carolyn Kizer, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called Ondaatje "a beautiful writer... brilliantly gifted." And Tom Clark wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that "Ondaatje handles fiction with the deceptive touch of a magician." Now, with The English Patient, he gives us his most stunningly original and lyric novel yet. During the final moments of World War II, in a deserted Italian villa, four people come together: a young nurse, her will broken, all her energy focused on her last, dying patient, a man in whom she has seen something "she wanted to learn, to grow into and hide in"... the patient: an unknown Englishman, survivor of a plane crash, his mind awash with a life's worth of secrets and passions ... a thief whose "skills" have made him one of the war's heroes, and one of its casualties ... an Indian soldier in the British army, an expert at bomb disposal whose three years at war have taught him that "the only thing safe is himself." Slowly, they begin to reveal themselves to each other, the stories of their pasts and of the present unfolding in scene after haunting scene, taking us into the Sahara, the English countryside, down the streets of London during the Blitz, into the makeshift army hospitals of Italy, and through the battered gardens and rooms of the villa. And with these stories, Ondaatje weaves a complex tapestry of image and emotion, recollection and observation: the paths and details of four diverse lives caught and changed and now inextricably connected by the brutal, improbable circumstances of war.

In a brilliantly original novel, four people come together in a deserted Italian villa during the final moments of World War II: a young American nurse and her horribly burned English patient, an American soldier of fortune, and an Indian soldier in the British army. Their stories of the past and of the present weave a spellbinding tapestry of how lives are caught and changed by the circumstances of war.

Editorial Reviews

Gale Research

Ranking the author among such contemporary novelists as Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, Cressida Connolly in the Spectator, praises the poetic quality of Ondaatje's fiction. "The writing is so heady that you have to keep putting the book down between passages so as not to reel from the sheer force and beauty of it," the reviewer exclaims, adding that "when I finished the book I felt as dazed as if I'd just awoken from a powerful dream."

New York Times Books of the Century

...[An] intensely theatrical tour de force [that] reveals, if not a great peace at the heart of the human mystery, a vision of how heroic the struggle is.

More Reviews (7) Fewer Reviews

San Francisco Chronicle

Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic...It transports the reader to another world.

Library Journal

Who is this wounded soldier living at an abandoned Italian villa near the end of World War II? He does not remember his name, only that he is British, but pieces of his conversation betray his knowledge. For the woman nursing him, his past does not matter. But as their twosome is invaded by two others, all focus shifts to his "true'' identity. Ondaatje deals with the culture he knows best: the British family, living in Canada, relocated during the war. Poet that he is, he replaces narrative with vivid, lyric snapshots. Listeners may have to periodically rewind the tape to recall who is who, since the four ruminating voices, narrated by actor Michael York, are seldom identified by name, and flashbacks add to the confusion. But this book is best appreciated if listeners suspend a focus on the immediate narrative line, picking up bits of the story here and there, retaining enough imagery that eventually they understand a much greater whole. As such, it's a masterpiece. -- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, Soho Weekly News

Donna Seaman

A man on fire parachutes from a burning plane, crash-landing in the Sahara. He is rescued by Bedouins who wrap him in oil and felt. World War II is winding to a miserable close, and eventually the man is brought to an Allied hospital set up in an old Italian villa. When the rest of the patients and staff leave for home, a young, half-mad Canadian nurse insists on staying behind with the unidentified burn victim. Hana's grief over the suffering of the wounded and her father's death have made her crave the ravaged beauty of the villa and the still company of this silent, pain-ridden man, but an old family friend tracks her down. A thief by nature, turned spy by the war, Caravaggio was captured and tortured. This trio of the wounded and haunted becomes a quartet when they are joined by Kirpal "Kip" Singh, a Sikh serving the British as a sapper, or mine-disarmer. Ondaatje slowly reveals the past of each of these battered survivors, evoking the subtleties of their psyches from the mysterious patient's deep knowledge of the desert to Kip's sixth sense for locating and neutralizing hidden bombs. This is a poetic and solemn narrative of the horrible process of war, the discipline, displacement, loss, and sudden, desperate love. Ondaatje seems to whisper, even confess each scene to his readers, handling them gingerly like shards of shattered glass. Yet another dazzler by this accomplished novelist and poet.

New York Times Books of the Century

...[An] intensely theatrical tour de force [that] reveals, if not a great peace at the heart of the human mystery, a vision of how heroic the struggle is.

San Francisco Chronicle

Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic...It transports the reader to another world.

Time Magazine

A rare and spellbinding web of dreams.

From Barnes & Noble

The bestselling-novel-turned-movie that garnered 9 Oscars including Best Picture. Four lives intertwine in this spellbinding tale set in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. "...an intensely theatrical tour de force."--The New York Times Book Review.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780679745204
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 12/20/1993
Edition description: Reissue
Edition number: 1
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 172,459
Lexile: 910L (what's this?)
Series: Vintage International Series
Product dimensions: 5.14 (w) x 8.02 (h) x 0.64 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje is a novelist and poet who lives in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of In The Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler, There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family. He received the Booker Prize and the Governor General's Award in Canada for The English Patient.

Read an Excerpt

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill toward the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.In the kitchen she doesn't pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.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.Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky.She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters.What? she asks, coming out of her concentration.He turns his dark face with itsgray eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.

First Chapter

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill toward the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

In the kitchen she doesn't pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.

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.

Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.

She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky.

She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters.

What? she asks, coming out of herconcentration.

He turns his dark face with its gray eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.

He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.

Reading Group Guide

1. The English patient "whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died" [p. 4]. Why does the patient consider himself to have "died"? Does he undergo any kind of rebirth during the course of the story?

2. What can you deduce from the novel about Hana's relationship with her father? Has her father's death, and the manner of it, caused her to retreat from the war and devote herself to the English patient? What influence do her feelings for her father have upon her relationship with Caravaggio?

3. Why did Hana decide to have an abortion during the war? How has that decision affected her, and how much influence has it had on her life at the villa?

4. How does the landscape of the novel--the Villa San Girolamo, the country around it, and the boundary between the two--reflect the inner lives of its inhabitants? Why do you think that Ondaatje has chosen Tuscany as the setting for his story? What significance do other landscapes, like the desert and the English countryside, hold for the story and its characters?

5. The English patient says, "I believe in such cartography--to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books" [p. 261]. How does Ondaatje use maps and cartography as a metaphor for people and history? What does geography mean to the English patient and to Ondaatje's other characters?

6. Why has Ondaatje made Caravaggio a thief by profession? What is it in his character that makes such an occupation appropriate? "Allhis life he has avoided permanent intimacy" [p. 116]. Does Caravaggio change during the course of the novel? Does he ever come to accept intimacy, and if so, what type of intimacy and intimacy with whom?

7. The imagery at the beginning of the novel likens the patient to Christ. Later, Caravaggio says to Hana, "You don't love him, you adore him, " to which she answers, "He is a saint" [p. 45]. Who else is likened to a saint, and why? Where else in the novel can you find religious imagery, and what is its purpose? The night before the Hiroshima explosion Kip sleeps in a church. What is the subject of the painting he sees there, and what is its thematic relation to the imminent atomic explosion?

8. "I came to hate nations, " says the English patient. "We are deformed by nation-states" [p. 138]. How does the desert negate the idea of nations? What sort of supra-national unity is experienced by the Europeans drawn to the desert, and how does each of them respond to the beginning of war? What alternate view of geography and history does the desert offer?

9. After Hiroshima, Caravaggio finds himself agreeing with Kip that "they would never have dropped such a bomb on a white nation" [p. 286]. How does the subject of race and racism enter into this novel? What conclusions, if any, are drawn at the end?

10. Why do you think that Hana removes all the mirrors in the house and puts them in an empty room? Is her own physical presence disturbing to her, or simply irrelevant?

11. What does this novel tell us about the British Empire at the moment it was beginning to dissolve? What are its moral strengths and its fatal weaknesses, as presented by the novel and its characters? What aspect of the Empire do Kip and Lord Suffolk represent, and what does Lord Suffolk's death symbolize? Was Kip completely misguided in attaching himself to the British? Is his revulsion from them at the end a reasonable response, or is it too violent?

12. "I think when I see him at the foot of my bed that Kip is my David" [p. 116], says the English patient. How can you describe the connection the patient feels between himself and Kip? Is it emotional, political, or dependent upon some other tie? In what way do the two men reflect one another?

13. "Madox was a man who died because of nations" [p. 242], says the English patient. What is it about Madox that makes him experience disillusionment as hopelessness, and commit suicide, while Kip is able to create new life out of similar disillusionment?

14. Why does Katherine treat her lover with physical violence? What does it say about the relationship between the two, and about Almasy's own character? What does the manner of Katherine's death tell us? Does it seem to you that Almasy links sex with death and pain? Can you find other places in the novel where sex and death are explicitly connected?

15. What needs and motivations originally drew Hana and Kip together? Might their relationship have been a lasting one, had it not been for the Hiroshima bombing? Why do they not keep in touch in later life, though they continue to think so often of one another?

16. Why do you think that Hana, unlike Kip, has finally "not found her own company, the ones she wanted" [p. 301]? Can Hana be seen as a "victim" of the war, or have her experiences in Italy simply made her more clearsighted and realistic? How do her two renditions of "La Marseillaise" indicate the change that the war has wrought in her?

17. Can the novel can be seen as a mystery, with the identity of the English patient at its heart? Does Caravaggio's identification of the patient solve the mystery, or does there remain a question at the end? How do other characters in The English Patient, such as Hana, Kip, and Katherine, discover or come to terms with their own identities?

18. How would you describe Ondaatje's style: does the story resemble a film perhaps, or a dream? Why has he chosen this mode in which to write this particular tale? What is his purpose in making the action move backward and forward in time?

19. The English Patient refers explicitly to Rudyard Kipling's Kim. If you know this novel, how does its presence within the text contribute to Ondaatje's theme? In what way, if any, do the characters in The English Patient correspond to those in Kim? Is it significant that Kip was born in Lahore?

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Anonymous

Posted November 30, 2000

A transcendent work

A meditation on passion, written in a formless, dreamlike, hallucinatory style. Images appear in the novel as they do in the imagination: suddenly and disquietingly. The author seems to be saying that life is as much about our internal experience as it is about the external world. Love is not this charming thing, but a desperate, agonizing crisis.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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LoisLaneLG

Posted April 24, 2010

Different, Intriging, Complex

Although the storyline and writing are very unusual, I frequently was confused. Often the author does not identify the speaker in a conversation and there is alot of moving from between time periods and characters without introduction. The characters themselves were very, very interesting. I learned from reading about the sapper who defused bombs during and after the war. Very informative. I'm 3/4 through. It is definately worth the read although the confusing nature of the writing initially tempted me to put it down.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted August 1, 2008

Stunning Imagery and Complex Characterization

This book begins with the most intriguing and hypnotic imagery I have ever found at the start of a book. A pilot standing in the wreckage of his plane, his leather helmet in flames...that image alone was enough to hook me into this finely crafted story. Ondaatje should be credited with telling more than just one excellent story in this novel, but many. The narrative pieces about Kip are excellent and he becomes a character that I wish Ondaatje would write about in a whole other novel just about him. Also, the English Patient himself with The Histories of Herodotus will be a character that remains in my memory for a long time...that book with his clippings and inserts...his relationship with Katharine...his life as enigmatic and capable of burying details and events as the desert which he loves. This novel will provide you with imagery that will stay with you long after you put the book down.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 5, 2007

A reviewer

i'm a high school senior and i had to read the book for an english class too but i found it wonderful. not because of its lyrical style or whatever, but because for once, someone wrote about the asian point of view of WWII and showed us the gravity of the bombings in Japan. All our lives we've only been taught the Western view of what had happened and who the good guys were but we never really saw that even if Japan was trying to take over the world, there were still many innocent people who were killed just because they were living there during the war.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted February 21, 2006

Quality Work

I really enjoyed this book. I came from the unique perspective of having seen the movie first, however, I was quite surprised at some of the differences that existed. I enjoyed Mr. Ondaatje's lyrical style and I highly recommend reading 'The English Patient.' It's an experience you'll not soon forget.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted December 29, 2004

Amazing

As soon as I finished this book it immediately became my favorite. Every sentence is beautifully crafted and evocative, keeping you completely enthralled in the story. Set in Italy near the close of World War 2, it tells the story of the English patient, who is badly burned over most of his body and confined to bed. Throughout the book, he tells Hana, his young, troubled nurse, of his life exploring and mapping the African deserts, and the love he found in the process. Hana herself is deeply haunted, having attended thousands of dying soldiers throughout the war, as well as having to cope with the death of her beloved father. Soon Hana and the English patient are joined by Carravaggio, the enigmatic thief and morphine addict who was her fathers best friend. When their strange group is completed by the young Sikh sapper, Kip, who misses his native India, friendships are formed that will change each persons life forever. Hana, far away from her homeland of Canada, finds a friend and lover in the also displaced Kip, and together the two of them discover solace in eachothers arms amid war and death. From his bed, the English patient enthralls everyone with his mysterious stories of exploration and dangerous love. Everything about this story is beautifully rich, from the characters to the words.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted November 24, 2004

The English

The setting is at Florence, Italy; but also Cairo, the Libyan Desert, and England. The time setting is in 1945 (the very end of World War 2), though the flashbacks are set throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. The main characters are Almásy is knowledgeable and reflective, the other characters reflect their thoughts and wishes told him, though he is badly burned in a plane crash, he retains all his mental faculties and is able to tell Hana, Kip, and Caravaggio the pieces of his past and the story of how he fell in love with Katharine. Hana, a young Canadian who serves the Allies as a nurse in World War II. Only twenty years old, Hana is an excellent nurse who takes good care of her patients. She has quickly learned that she must not become emotionally attached to her patients. Very close to her father, Hana had an emotional breakdown when she heard the news of his death. She falls in love with the idea of the English patient, of the thought that she is caring for a saint-like man. Her heart, however, belongs to Kip, to whom she looks for protection as she stands at the bond between childhood and adulthood. Kip a Sikh man from India who works as a 'sapper,' defusing bombs for the British forces in World War II. Kip is polite and well-mannered, and has both the skill and character to be an excellent sapper. A brown man in a white nation, Kip has grown emotionally detached, aware that people will not always react positively to him. His emotional detachment stands in the way of his relationships, most significantly his relationship with Hana. Caravaggio, a Canadian thief whose profession is rights during the war he puts his skills to use for the British intelligence effort. Caravaggio serves as a kind of surrogate father to Hana, and sheds light on the identity of the English patient. Katharine Clifton an Oxford-educated woman, the wife of Geoffrey Clifton. One of the most mysterious characters in the novel, Katharine is never fully understood. She married Geoffrey quite young and traveled with him to Northern Africa, and that she is an avid reader who learns all she can about Cairo and the desert. Though polite and genteel, Katharine nevertheless takes what she wants, assertively approaching Almásy and telling him that she wants him to 'ravish her. Geoffrey Clifton a British explorer, Katharine Clifton's husband. A young, good-natured, able man, Geoffrey is a new addition to the group of explorers who are mapping the North African desert. Geoffrey seems to have everything going for him: an Oxford education, wealthy family connections, and a beautiful young wife. He is a proud and devoted husband, and enjoys praising his wife in front of the other explorers. Goeffrey claims to have come to North Africa purely out of an interest in exploration, but Almásy finds out that Geoffrey has been working for British Intelligence as photographer. Madox, Almásy's best friend is in the desert. Madox is a rational, level-headed man who, like Almásy, chose to live in the desert to study the features of the land and report back to the Geographical Society. Unlike Almásy, Madox includes his own emotional reactions in his writing and reports, and is not shy to describe his amazement at a particular mountain or his wonder at the size of the moon. Lord Suffolk a member of the old English, who, once the war begins, takes it upon himself to defuse bombs and train other men to do so. Lord Suffolk is the one 'true English gentleman' whom Kip meets while he is abroad. Though Lord Suffolk is described as strange, Kip finds that he is actually a wonderful man and a kind mentor. Kip especially values the fact that Lord Suffolk can look beyond his race and welcome him into the 'English family.' Patrick, Hana's father, is the only parent who was present to raise her while she was growing up. Like Hana, Patrick leaves Canada to join the war effort. Hana is extremely close to her father, and the news of his death sparks her emotional breakd

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted October 4, 2003

wonderful

This book was a masterpiece. I love the way Ondaatje wrote out the story, how he integrated each character at a different setting. It was written in a flashback manner like Catch-22. This book is a web of four people finding themselves and learning of each other and themselves. A true romantic and dramatic piece.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted July 1, 2002

Surreal, but a true love with a brief intensity

This is a story just about love, not war, or even a love in a war. However, it seems the story did map the characters from one space to another, and made it an intricating multidimension. The story is well-plotted. Hana is not the main character, but the English patient is. In some sense to him, Hana is probably an image (or 'ghost') of Katherine, so reminds him in his memory. But, what two different characters between Hana and Katherine, and what two different loves they give a man! The story is so far from the philosophy that is commonly adopted for life. But, compared to those, I feel this one is so condensed that romances in other forms are just as vain, and I wish I could find why a person will choose a love like this. In the end, I have to admit, it is a true love, brief but lasting forever.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 5, 2002

each piece a poem

That is how I read it. I find my writing infected with a similar style; and I don't mind that much.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 21, 2002

The English Patients Fall From Grace

I really enjoyed the English Patient for Michael Ondaatje's use of language. It was like reading beautiful prose and getting a history lesson out of it at the same time. Every sentence he wrote could be looked at in four different ways, with the possibilities of meaning neverending. The four characters are intricately entwined so that at times it is hard to decipher who is speaking or where the plot is going. However anyone who is capable of writing such a story is a true storyteller, and is definately worth reading to challenge the mind and the soul. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a serious read, an excellent tale, or a passionate love story. The English Patient encapsulates them all.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted January 15, 2002

*****

I read the book because a friend loved the movie. He is a person who would not normally reccommend this type of film. I read the book because I knew it would be better than a film. I read the first few pages in an airport bookstore and I was immediately enchanted. Ondaatje's style was so fluid, his prose was as beautiful and intense as poetry. I did not find it confusing at all, because I was enjoying the language so much that the plot took on a secondary role. I do not want to rave, but I love this book. It is one of the only books that I didn't want to end.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted September 23, 2001

A beautiful story

This story was wonderful. I saw the movie first and fell in love with it. I decieded to read the book and fell in love with it also. The language is a little confusing, but once you get past it you'll begin to appreciate it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted October 7, 2000

the english patient

It seems like you either love or hate this book. I love it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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GenW

Posted January 8, 2012

Great Writing

A sophisticated and poetic use of language to tell a story with some perverse twists which are immediately overcome by the power of the telling of it.
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Anonymous

Posted November 15, 2011

Love

Its like poetry.
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3416575

Posted May 16, 2011

True Classic

Everything i could ever hope for in a story. Great story!!!
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Anonymous

Posted November 10, 2010

Wonderful

My favorite book.
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Morgan-Lee

Posted August 7, 2009

more from this reviewer

So what did I miss here??

I read this book mainly b/c i wanted to see the movie so i could gaze apon Ralph Fiennes and is sexy eyes. Sad. I know. I was very intregued by this plot at first. then as I read further in and We meet the 2 other main characters that comes into the story, i feel that it sways FAAAR FARR away for its original plan. To tell us about what happens to the people in the villa and who the English Patient is. This ending bothered me as well. We never really learn EXACTLLY WHAT HAPPENS!!!?? and its not just a casual slip into years later. Literly it just flops into about 15 yrs. later not telling us the out come of the english patient, or Hana @ the villa. This is why I rate this book soo low. Im sure when i see the movie i will LOvE and understand it much better than the book. The righting style is very unique tho. More like reading a poem than a Novel.
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SpyderWryter

Posted June 6, 2009

more from this reviewer

I Also Recommend:

Not for me

I read The English Patient in my graduate school writing class. Most people enjoyed it, but I didn't. The biggest issue I had was Ondaatje's writing style. The book is set near the end of WW2 in Italy with a cast of 4 characters who have all been affected by the war and are in some way disconnected as a result of it. Ondaatje tries hard to make the reader feel what it would be like to be in this world through his writing style. He jumps back and forth through time frequently. He moves in and out of the characters' heads, sometimes within the same paragraph. Sometimes he encloses dialogue in quotations; other times he doesn't. Sometimes he writes in the past tense; other times it's the present tense. Some of his metaphors and comparisons make no logical sense (to me at least) so that you can't connect the two objects being connected through the comparison. As a result of all this, you feel very disoriented and disconnected while you read the book. You don't always know what time period you're in, who is speaking, when a speech begins and ends, or even how you're supposed to connect two images.

I found it very hard to enjoy because of this very effect Ondaatje purposely creates. I also didn't care about the characters in the story, except for Kip who is interesting though hardly engaging. I didn't care about their plights and had no desire to see them get some kind of happy ending. It's not so much that they are flat characters, but partly because of the writing style, which continuously pulled me out of the story when I just wanted to connect with the characters. Another reason why I didn't care about them was probably because there is not much happening in the present action of the story, at least not much of interest. There was nothing happening that compelled me to keep reading. When the book goes into the characters' pasts it becomes more engaging, but half of the book is in the present.

I believe Ondaatje was a poet before he took to fiction, which shows in his writing. I've never been a fan of poetry, which could explain things. So while I understand what this book is doing and how effectively it does it, I just couldn't enjoy it. But I think if you war-based stories, if you enjoy poetry, and if you like a more "loose" literary style, then you may enjoy this book.
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wonderful

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each piece a poem

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the english patient

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So what did I miss here??

Not for me