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Summary: well it is just so beautful the way the author uses words
Review: its the best poetical work ive read in a long time you have to savor the dialogue and the descritions close your eyes and see the desert hte burning man dropping from the sky the night like poison being washed away by the dawn and the chapter in situ is marvelous for its understatemtn of the life and identify of the inidan kip. the book has a beauty all it sown as does the movie but the book is better i wish id read it first
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Summary: One of the best
Review: I loved this book and think that it's probably one of the best I've ever read. It's engrossing and the characters are beautifull portrayed and not superficial like many popular characters. As seniors in high school, myself and two friends found ourselves completely in this book. It's brilliant, the story of Katherine and the patient, Hana and Kip, and Carravaggio! This is one of the finest pieces of literature ever written!
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Summary: Under the Tuscan Sun during WWII
Review: I'm not too big on poetry, but I can see where the author's previous work as a poet has influenced his prose style, and the results are breathtaking. You'll want to take your time and savor it. PS: This is a work for adults, so assigning it for AP English was probably a mistake.
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Summary: Slow moving and difficult to read.
Review: This book was an assignment for an AP English course and if it hadn't been I would have put it down after the first three pages. It was hard to follow from the begginning because it gave descriptions about things you couldn't understand. Confused and irritated, I forced myself to finish the novel and found the entire thing to be boring and lame.
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Summary: A mesmerizing tale of love and war.
Review: This is a wonderful story of love, war and diversity. Although it takes some reading into and looking beyond what is given at face value, it captures you and takes you on a fantastic voyage through different characters and mind boggling situations. When I first started reading this book, I found it boring and long, but once I got used to the pace of the book, I started to like it, although I still wasn't overjoyed about reading it. When I was finished with the book, I didn't really know what to think. My teacher began to go over this book in class and explain it more. I found out that I hadn't looked into it very much and I realized there was a lot more to the story than a burned man with a story to tell and a woman falling in love with a man that just got finished with war. I fell in love with the story of 'The English Patient.' I think this is a wonderful book that can change a persons way of thought and make one realize how different each person really is. There are many things in this world that go on that people don't think happen anymore. People still are segregated among themselves because of different ethnic backgrounds and cultures. This book explores many different aspects of the world we live in and the way Michael Ondaatje ties them all together is phenomenal!
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Summary: Purely Beautiful
Review: "The English Patient" is one of the few books that i have ever read which have truly inspired me. I utterly adored the lyricism and poetic, musical quality of the writing. On every page i found passages that i would have to underline to read to my friends simply because i thought they were beautiful. This high praise, however, was not immediate. The first time i read the book i was somewhat confused by the switching narrative, and the description which seemed to outweigh plot and character. However, as i re-read the book, i came to see that it cannot be viewed as a straight story, rather, you need to read it once to get a general idea of the parts of the story, and then as you re-read, you are able to see how the various episodes fit together. You can also see the clear character deliniation which is not at first obvious. Ultimately, i believe that "The English Patient" is a story of such beauty and subtlety that it must be read several times before the full impact of the drama, the tradgey and the poetry shines through.
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Summary: Pretentious, overblown, and boring
Review: This is the kind of book that some English teachers might point to as "great writing," but I found it incredibly pretentious and overblown. The characters ultimately are cardboard and uninteresting, the plot is not particularly riveting, and I found the writing style to be pompous and irritating. In trying to wade through this thicket of inpenetrably stuffy verbiage, I ultimately was bored silly. This book gets my "Emperor's New Clothes" award for this year.
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Summary: The movie does justice to the plot-- But the novel is poetry
Review: Having made the mistake of seeing the movie before reading the novel, I had certain expectations going into the "English Patient". I was taken away by the poetic form in which Ondaatje writes. The order in which he arranges words and connects them, it forced me to look at life from different perspectives. I've heard it was a chore for people to "get through" this book. I couldn't put it down. I finished reading it in a couple of days. In fact, I may have to read it again...
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Summary: Not the masterpiece that I hoped for, but excellent anyway
Review: Poetic and engaging. I like the way he handles time, as though painting in layers, going back to a point and elaborating on it, coming back to a "present" and then going back again and again, and then finally moving forward to the end, although I don't think the last parts of the book live up to the promise at the beginning. I have remarked elsewhere that the book disappoints with its phony PC notions about how Kip and some others might have reacted to the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities, the author imagining that Kip would be offended that the bomb was dropped on "brown people" and not on Europeans; but in truth, few at the time really comprehended nor cared about anything other than ending the horror of the worst war in human history. I was more horrified by the booby trap bombs left behind by the Germans that Kip had to disarm because they were left specially to murder people whereas the atomic bombs had at quickly as possible and with a minimum of lost life. Would Ondaatje have wanted to storm the island of Japan? I don't think so. But that is not the novel's only conformance with the current politically correct climate. The English Patient, like the preponderence of contemporary novels focuses on a woman, in this case the nurse Hana, surrounded by various interesting men, mainly because that is what the market place requires. My point is that even the most skillful and accomplished artists, and Ondaatje is one of them, must conform to the dictates of their age in commercial terms or not be published at all. I saw the movie first and then read the book, something I almost never do, and I was reminded of a remark by a student of mine who said that she preferred to read the book first because that way she drew in her mind her own picture of what the characters were like. I found myself greatly influenced by the actress who played Hana (Juliette Binoche), so much so that I did not form any independent conception of the way Hana appeared in the book. I think and the actor's interpretation. Good book, but not the masterpiece I had hoped for.
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Summary: "That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice."
Review: 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.
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