The English Patient
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679745204
ISBN: 0679745203
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 1993-11-30
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1993-11-30
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Booker Prize-winning novel, now a critically acclaimed major motion picture, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin Scott Thomas. With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Ponderously slow and overblown--an unreal world of poetry
Comment: I arrived with high expectations: this novel won the Booker no less, and I adored the movie. Unfortunately I disliked the book for the very reasons I loved the movie: it is an epic, poetic, sweeping vision of romance. For three hours on screen one can be carried away in this way. But for 300 pages? Ondaatje asks to much of us.
The characters do not speak to one another or think, unless it is in the most meticulously floral language. There is not an inelegant passage in the book! Of course, there are many readers open to such a book, but others should steer clear of this long winded rumination on love and war.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Words have a power, Caravaggio...
Comment: This was the book that helped me find my "voice" as a writer. The intense, unique, exquisite, seemingly random details Ondaatje uses to convey characterization, motivation, and mood continue to amaze me each time I read his works, but THIS novel has the ring of poetry in every sentence.
The movie is an entirely different animal, and it HAS to be, because Ondaatje's power lies in his descriptions; his similes and metaphors; his own private way of viewing the human experience--not in the beats of the plot or the wit of the dialogue. This book is not driven by action but by the heart-wrenching ache of slowly unfolding details that peel back the layers of each character's past until they are completely bare.
The meat of this work is found in what is NOT being said, but always implied; a casual reader will miss the depths of Ondaatje's meaning. (And perhaps I myself have misunderstood his intentions--who knows?) But here are a few samples of passages I'm sure are profound enough to make a wary buyer an avid reader:
"Water is exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth."
"His hands held together like a human bowl."
"She paused after each set of notes as if bringing her hands out of water to see what she had caught, then continued, placing down the main bones of the tune."
" 'Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.' "
" 'I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone, it's like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I've always liked flesh the colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Have you seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye against your collarbone. I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a tree and climb into it and sleep.' "
"She sits on the bed hugging nakedness. He slides his open palm along the sweat of her shoulder. This is my shoulder, he thinks, not her husband's, this is my shoulder. As lovers they have offered parts of their bodies to each other, like this."
"Everywhere she touches braille doorways. As if organs, the heart, the rows of rib, can be seen under the skin, saliva across her hand now a colour. He has mapped her sadness more than any other."
Sometimes, I feel like the only one who can describe the mastery of Ondaatje's style is Ondaatje himself, but he seems far too humble for that. I've learned so much from him, from this story; I wish I could afford to give a copy to everyone I meet, just to show them that even the most horrific and agonizing of situations, real or imagined, can be expressed beautifully, and therefore, transformed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly Beautiful
Comment: 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 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 spellbinding and stunning.
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 see 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 centerpoint 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.
Deeply romantic and lyrical, it is the same story, but a more impressionistic and less linear portrait of love and loss. The book is like a delicate flower just beneath the waters, 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 a more real fashion. Both are magnificent, just a different picture of the same flower.
If you love the film, you must read the book. It is a hauntingly beautiful novel different from anything else you'll ever read. A masterwork of rich and evocative prose that will touch the heart, an organ of fire.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous prose weaves these lives together
Comment: How fortunate I was years ago when the film, The English Patient, was two weeks from release and a friend said, 'Oh, the movie is based on the novel. I think you'd like it....' I bought the book the next night and stayed up late reading it. Ondaatje sees the world through a poet's eyes, and he gives us artistic renderings of people and places in a rich time in history. This novel would definitely be included in my list of Top 20 favorites. Ondaatje is a writer's writer....
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poetically beautiful
Comment: Ondaatje's prose is lyrical and poetic. More than anything, Ondaatje creates an atmoshpere that is as much a presence in this book than any single character. The story delves into the lives of four people living in a war-damaged Italian monastery as World War II ends. Hana, a nurse, attempts to nurse the English patient back to life. Caravaggio, Hana's childhood friend, and Kip, a skillful bomb difuser, make up the rest of the cast of characters. Beautifully and evocatively written but slow at times.
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