Rating: 
Summary: Descriptions of Beauty
Review: A beautifully written multi-layered story of love, loss, war, and sadness. Whether writing about the simple pleasures in life or the sorrow circumstances bring upon us Ondaatje does so with a prose of simple beauty that not many can. Since you have probably seen the wonderful film (unless you live in a cave) I won't detail the story. This is by far the best of this author's work. Something will seem unfinished at the end of this book and perhaps that is the point. War creates boundaries and disrupts the possibilities of life. Ondaatje's prose is told as though an eloquent angel were telling us the events taking place in that war torn Villa in Italy where Hana cares for "The English Patient". This is the unusual case where the film IS as good as the book and only enhances your enjoyment of reading it, allowing you to picture the people and the places of this quietly heartbreaking novel. In the end, Hana's heart will keep returning to that moment in time, unable to move on from what might have been were it not for war. This is a beautiful book and an absolute Must Read........
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Brilliant
Review: Ondaatje is a superb writer. The English Patient is a brilliant book. Ondaatje's genius is to reveal characters as people are revealed in life - not in linear chronological narratives, but in glimpes, flashes of lightning, disconnected anecdotes. Sometimes contradictory, always fascinating. The book takes the shape of these disparate images and recollections slowly coalescing to form four protagonists: Hana the Canadian nurse, Almasy the English Patient, Caravaggio the thief, and Kip the Sikh deminer. They are isolated from the world in a postwar Italian villa, each with subtle motives defined by Ondaatje's profound attention to detail. The prose is evocative, like Almasy's comment on Kipling: to be read slowly and then reread. Images and scenes slowly take shape like a jigsaw puzzle. It is not until the final few pages that we finally learn what compels Hana to tend so devotedly to the mortally-burned English Patient, it is not until the final pages that Kip reviews his dedication to the British war cause. The characters' evolutions come slowly and naturally as Almasy's stories of the desert catalyze the entire book. The movie is not this book. Read the book - it's brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreakingly Gorgeous
Review: "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.
Rating:
Summary: Of Maps and Borders
Review: Director Minghella may have had a lot to thank Ondaatje's writing for the inspired technical brilliance of the movie version of "The English Patient". One realizes this after reading the book. Over the last one year, the book has become a constant in my life. Not only do I recommend this highly to everyone I know, I have read sections of it to people on occassion. Sometimes over the phone... long distance. Perhaps this will give you some idea about the savoury old-wine sensuality of Ondaatje's words. Just read how he describes words -- like Zerzurra, or even, Libya.. It is a simple enough story of four wounded lives coming together in a war-torn Italian village for some days. They relive a little of their past, mingle their pain and desolation, heal what little they can, and finally, part ways. And yet, how exquisite the story telling -- with the lightest touch, how subtle the art! The deserts of Ondaatje's Africa is a sea of sand without borders, that even while rife with politics, holds its timeless secrets close to the heart and remains utterly inaccessible. It's a lost world that he writes about - and this is a book about loss. The count Almasy (who was cursed with the wrong name) summarises it best when he says to the thief Caravaggio (of the missing thumbs), "Everything I have ever loved or wanted has been taken away from me".
Rating: 
Summary: Seductive prose, but what's beyond?
Review: A strange book, this novel. I read it twice in the space of a few years. On my first reading I was mesmerised by Ondaatje's beautifully suggestive prose and the ravishing exoticism of its characters and locations: the Lybian Desert, pre-war Cairo, war-torn Tuscany, ... But on my second reading I fell through the author's magical web of seduction into a great void. The magnificence of Count Almasy turned out to be a vapid pose of a would-be 'universal man'; Kip, the 'war saint', crumbled and became hardly more than a dexterous clown; Caravaggio, the thief, is a poor bugger rumaging the site for dope. And the nurse, well, she just kind of dissolved into thin air. Despite the frantic gesturing, there is nothing that ties these four characters to the earth. Their relationships are static, transitory, ephemeral and remain unexplained. The novel teems with fleeting simulacra: Herodotus' Histories (why not Coupland's Microserfs?), the Giotto frescos, the Tuscan landscape, and many more minutiae of Italian folklore. And of course there is the grand, magnificent desert, that primeval, mystical landscape that suddenly turns into a cardboard background for a cheap film. Think of it, at what point in the book does the desert really become more than a mantra of exotic names? It does, only once, at the very start of the book when the camels, smelling the esoteric aromas emanating from the mysterious healer's phials, are heard shrieking in the distance: a moment of great poetic tension and physical suggestiveness! But otherwise, nowhere we get into the thick of it, as we do in Bowles' Sheltering Sky or Patrick White's Voss. For my part, Ondaatje could have set his novel in the Borneo jungle or amidst the glistening peaks of the Hindu Kush to similar effect. Finally, there is the war, this violent conflict which is most emphatically present when it is absent, as in the epic scene towards the end of the book where the city of Naples is turned into a ghost city for just a few hours. Ondaatje has written a great novel of our times. There is no depth in this book, only surface. But, God, is this surface beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: This is a story about love above all
Review: While the English Patient explores a panoramic story line - covering the deserts and bazaars, the ravages of World War II on two continents, the languid days and haunted nights - the real depth of this story are the love stories. The enigmatic Hungarian aristocrat Almasy and his immorata Katherine, a married English Ice Queen; the fragile and damaged nurse Hana and the shy reserved Indian army engineer Kip; Caravaggio the damaged thief and his love for women in general. Their tokens of affection, their whispered tributes, what they are willing to do and willing to forgo for their love - this is the true beauty of this book. This is a romance, but a grown up, beautiful romance that is delivered with some of the most haunting and evocative style in modern literature. If you are looking for story about love that avoids the graphic and the self-indulgent, the vulgar and the tacky, and instead inspires you with romance in the tradition of Tristan and Isolde alongside the pleasure of everyday treasures, please read this book, it is pure rapture.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Left To Say.....
Review: I am reading this incredibly lyrical and emotionally complex novel with my high school students. Most of it, admittedly, is above their heads. But they do recognize its beauty, it's easy grace-like we do in really good poetry or in great songs, or like in falling in love. The English Patient is beautiful in most imaginable ways, and has become like a song we sing together in class everyday. Ondaatje says, "a novel is like a mirror walking down the road." He slips into lines like these as if they were nothing at all, but they will leave you speechless with their unadorned truth and honesty. I know years from now, when these ninth graders have their own kids, and find love or not; when some of them slip into affairs and disappointments, and even joy, they will remember Katherine and Almasy- and the emptiness of the desert. What else is literature for? In the middle of our national crisis, Katherine's words seem to haunt all of us with their portent- "We're the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps, or the names of powerful men." Try beating that. There is nothing left to say, really. Is there?
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: A stunning work. Ondaatje's style is unparalleled by other moderen writers. The English Patient is written with a richness of language and imagery that is equalled only in the works of such giants as Milton. The shifting time and setting may be confusing at first, but these elements really do enhance the work. It is basically an anti-war story that would probably not be considered a masterpiece simply for its themes and the treatment of themes; however, the richness of language Ondaatje uses easily makes him one of the greatest writers of modern times and makes The English Patient a masterpiece of the English language
Rating:
Summary: My succinct review
Review: I will endeavor to keep this review as brief as possible: I have not read that many books, to be honest with you; but Ondaatje's "The English Patient" is the most enjoyable of all the ones that I have read. Ondaatje's style is unique and one can see that this is a poet at work; the breadth of his vocabulary is immense and his extravagant use of poetic devices make the book a work of art. Suffice it to say that I have never read a novel which incorporates so much of the literary scope into one product: this is not just a novel; it's poetry and art as well. The only thing I did not like about this book is that, at times it can go off topic a bit and become quite drab- but this is the exception rather than the rule, and the novel as a whole is very enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: Truth not told...
Review: The movie, very romantic, so.. I needed even more than before to visit Toscana (in the end, also a disappointment compared with Piemonte, Veneto, ...). Unfortunately, novels and films not only need not tell the truth but are free to distort it badly. The real story of Almasy can be read on the web, in English or German. He was a German agent, was never captured, had no great interest in women and died on the way home sometime after the war of a disease contracted earlier in Africa. He indeed was an Africa researcher and did write a book, Schwimmer in die Wüste, about the pictures on the rocks in the desert. Almasy means apple, more or less, his family made money from apple orchards in Hungary and bought the castle, never quite attaining official status as nobility from the Austrian government. So, the film is largely a charming, romantic fabrication, as are most films. Somehow, it is very unsatisfying to be seduced by a book or film and later discover that harldly anything in it is correct. The fortress where Laszlo Almasy grew up, Burg Bernstein, lies south of Vienna and is now an attractive little Schloss-Hotel run by my wife's only aunt's best friend, a Küffstein-German who was adopted by the Africa researcher's brother after WWII. The castle does have a fantastic kitchen and a wonderful high view of the surrounding territory, maybe the best view in the region. Also, there are nice wine 'villages' not far away.
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