The English Patient

Rating:
Summary: Evocative, Ethereal and Compelling
Review: I picked up this after much debate and enjoyed it. At times, it was hard to follow but that is part of the nature of the text and prose. We have four characters and their lives and more importantly how they all come together in one place. Interesting (sounds like Canterbury Tales abit) but the more problem lies in if you are not interested in the one character's story then you are loosing part of the book. I was very interested in the romance between the Patient and his past but less so in the nurse. She was not very convincing to me. So read it and see.

Rating:
Summary: Orientalism from Multicultural Canada
Review: On page six Ondaatje writes how the Bedouin who have found "the English Patient," "had come each night and chewed and softened the dates and passed then down into his mouth." It is an intensely evocative and memorable image. Yet back on the first page, we have Hana in the Italian villa where the Patient has ended up ruminating over her care of him and in particular "the penis sleeping like a sea horse." Another memorable image, but as Nicholas Spice pointed out in the London Review of Books, sea horses are, like all small fish, extremely alert and cautious, so it could not really be said that the organs of a horribly burned and helpless man sleep like them.

If there is one note that Ondaatje consistently strikes through the novel it is the false one. I may be the only person I know who thought The English Patient was a better movie than Fargo, but the book is deeply flawed. Consider the following. The crucial love triangle at the core of the novel consists of three archaeologists, a Hungarian aristocrat and an English couple. They spend much of the thirties wandering around Libya which appears largely as exotic desert where great monuments are buried under the desert wastes. No mention is made of the fact that people actually live in Libya, and that in the twenties and thirties where the novel takes place, Libya was a victim of horrendous Italian aggression as Mussolini slaughtered tens of thousands of people fighting for their independence.

Likewise consider the moral dilemma that arises when the Hungarian Count de Almasy gets entangled with the Nazis. A better writer would note Hungary's authoritarian and anti-semitic political culture, and the fact that Hungary was Germany's ally in the Second World war. Likewise would a crack thief like Caravaggio really wander around naked in carrying out a job? One suspects that Ondaatje just thought that the image was evocative. Finally Kip, the Sikh bomb expert who has an affair with Hana at the end of the novel angrily leaves the British Army in outrage over Hiroshima, saying that the Allies would never have treated a white city like that. The problem is not the outrage. The problem is that during Kip's tenure in the army, the British had imprisoned Gandhi and Nehru, suppressed the 1942 Quit India movement, caused a disastrous famine in the Bengal costing millions of lives, had committed a large number of imperialist and selfish acts which can be seen in the works of Christopher Thorne, and, incidentally, had bombed Dresden to ashes. That Kip should be upset NOW begs the question. The problem is that Kip does not think like an Indian soldier, but like his author and his audience who no doubt heard of Hiroshima first and learned of the rest much later if at all. Indeed were it not for the fact that Ondaatje is a Sri-Lankan-Canadian writer, one might say that the English Patient was a classic work of orientalism.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning certainly, but his best??
Review: I love Ondaatje's work, but there is none better than 'In the skin of a lion', there is no book more deserving of any award, including this one.

I have began and put down this book so frequently it is already dog-eared from my constant indecision. I think I feared that perhaps I would be disapppointed.

I adore both'In the Skin of a Lion' and 'Anil's Ghost' (to an extent) and I thought the film was amazingly beautiful. I must admit, I was slightly disappointed, but certainly, I could never regret finally reading the piece. There is a beauty captured many books, and no author captures the beauty of words and creates a more stunning and remembered image than Ondaatje.

I hate history books. Certainly, I see the importance of recording history, but I am far from a budding historian. This book has a substantial portion devoted to the events surrounding the second world war. I also hate sand and probably would despise deserts should I one day find the need to venture into one. This book has a substantial portion devoted to the desert. So we began on bad terms.

But there is more to this novel than sand and history; there is striking romanticism on several levels, wonderfully crafted descriptions and stunningly vivid characters. There is immense heartbreak and a fine weave of several sub stories. It is deep rich and vivid and worth reading. Particularly if you like sand, history and explosives. (Thankfully he hit a note with me there.)

'In the Skin of a lion' seems that tiny bit better, but I would have no hestitations in reccommending either, or any, of Ondaatje's work.

Rating:
Summary: Good movie, average book
Review: This book has too many central characters each with her / his own separate story resulting in a disconnected patchwork of human tragedies. Taken together these tragedies sample the confusion following WW2 but fail to capture together anything revealing about humanity during such tormented times. The prose can be original and quirky but the author doesn't handle the language well enough yet to bring creative originality to the English language.

Rating:
Summary: a classic novel
Review: Beautiful English. It is really a classic novel and will be remembered by the future generations.

Rating:
Summary: boring and irritating
Review: I guess these are the books the jury likes for awards. I was looking for a good lively love story, but ended up reading one of the most complicated and dragging novel of all time.

There is no begining or ending and the lives in the book have no meaning. a boring and dissappointing saga of a burnt patient and the nurses love for him or who, i could not understand.

My worst read so far

Rating:
Summary: extremely cautious recommendation
Review: Gary Kamiya : Let me ask you about the genesis of The English Patient. I was curious how it came into being. Because it does have a narrative skeleton, but over that is a fantastically imaginative, rich overlay of words and images. What came to you first - an image? Or was the entire plot present in your mind from the beginning?

Michael Ondaatje : No, the plot wasn't there until I finished the book, probably. I don't really begin a novel, or any kind of book, with any sure sense of what's happening or even what's going to happen. Almasy [the badly-burned "English patient" whose tragic love affair with Katherine Clifton forms the heart of the book] wasn't in the story in my head. Kip [the Indian sapper, or bomb-disposal expert, whose love affair with the English patient's nurse, Hana, offers a counterpoint to Almasy's story] wasn't in the story. Caravaggio [a shadowy thief with bandaged hands] wasn't in the story. It began with this plane crash and it went on from there. Now, why did this plane crash? What did that have to do with this guy in the plane? Who was the guy? When was it happening? Where was it happening? All those things had to be uncovered or unearthed, as opposed to being sure in my head.

Then there was a nurse and there was a patient, there was a man who was stealing back a photograph of himself. It was those three images. I did not know who they were, or how they were connected. So I sat down, I started to write and try to discover what the story was. And build from those three germs, really. I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me. -INTERVIEW : Delirious in a Different Kind of Way (Gary Kamiya, November, 1996, Salon)

Long time readers of these pages will be familiar with the concept of "Letting the Tiger out of the Cage" (newcomers may want to read a brief definition.) Well, what are we to make of a novel whose genesis in the author's mind was the scene where the tiger gets let out? Because as I was watching the movie version, I desperately wanted the husband to succeed in crashing his plane and his wife into Ralph Fiennes. I mean, I know this is supposed to be a great tragic love triangle and all, but I'm not big on adultery to begin with, added to which is the fact that they are just horrible people and what passes for love amongst them is really little more than sado-masochism. So, yes, I wanted them dead. Nor did I particularly care that the petty sneak thief, Caravaggio, had been dethumbed by the Nazis.

The characters that I did care for somewhat were Hana and Kip. I realize that Hana was supposed to be this horribly damaged woman, but c'mon, she's played by the luminescent Juliette Binoche, who, by herself, nearly suffices to justify the continued existence of France. Kip, meanwhile, is all earnestness and courage, easy to like, even if his role onscreen is pretty minimal. But then, just as it seems these two and their relationship will rescue the story, Kip has his little freak out over the atom-bombing of Japan, and we're left with only Hana. After three hours, that just wasn't enough for me.

So I probably made a mistake when I tried reading this book right after seeing the movie; bringing too much baggage along from the film to give the novel a fair shake. Now, rereading it several years later, I do like it better, but I still don't like it.

There's still the basic problem that the English Patient and Katherine Clifton are so profoundly unlikeable and that their affair so little resembles what healthy humans think of as love. Even more disturbing, when the English Patient leads the Nazis across Northern Africa in exchange for access to the cave where he left Katherine, he acts out the most abhorrent sentiment of the 20th Century, E. M. Forster's monstrously selfish dictum : "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." It would even be more honorable if the English Patient helped the Nazis out of a genuine feeling of Anti-Semitism. It would at least reflect a capacity to think of people beyond himself. But the nature of his relationship with Katherine is exactly this selfish and destructive, so perhaps aiding the German Army follows from the logic (or illogic) of their affair.

Hana and Kip are more central to the story, and that helps greatly. Kip's background is particularly interesting. The scenes of him being taught about bomb disposal and of his relationship with the Brits who trained him are especially well done. Unfortunately, they only serve to make it even more jarring when he reacts so hysterically to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His meltdown reads as if it's driven more by Ondaatje's ideology than by the dictates of the character.

That ideology is troubling too. In some ways, this is one of the most racist novels I've ever read : Ondaatje is obsessed with skin and not merely it's substance but it's color. He mentions skin so many times and in so many ways that I lost count, but, of course, the central metaphor of the story is the English Patient, this vast repository of Western knowledge, with his white skin burned away. Then the old European lovers, he and Katherine, are supplanted by the new multiracial coupling of Kip and Hana. Finally, after Kip indicts the West for it's racially motivated bombing of Japan, he leaves the Villa San Girolamo, this wreckage of Western civilization, and sets out on his own, symbolically abandoning the white past and heading towards the brown future. And just in case that's too subtle, the final image of the book is Katherine knocking a fork off of a counter in Canada and Kip catching a fork in India, the tools of civilization being transferred from white hands to brown. There's a real air of racial triumphalism and moral superiority to the story that perhaps only Third World authors can get away with these days.

Ultimately, I did like the book somewhat better on rereading and it's much better than the movie. There are some great images and the language is lyrical and often captivating, though after three hundred pages it does get kind of cloying. I guess this is one that I have some significant problems with, but find interesting enough to give an extremely cautious recommendation.

GRADE : C

Rating:
Summary: A worthy companion
Review: This is one of those books that deserve whatever literary award they win. It's just too much of a classical and well-researched piece of work. From the deserts of Libya, through the lounges of the Geographical Society in London and Cairo to the Florentine countryside of Italy. This book takes you on a guided tour of several historical places and times.

But by far the best attribute of the book is in its characters. The yarn revolves around the English patient (AKA Almasy), an adventurer and an avatar of knowledge- who suffers from the worst possible burns- and the way he influences all those around him. Hanna, the nurse who has vowed to stick by the English patient's side no matter what, Carravaggio, the brilliant thief whose hands are mutilated after an operation gone sour. There is also Kip the Sikh, the young sapper who falls in love with Hanna. They are the dwellers of the Villa San Girolamo. They are all fascinated by the English patient in their own different ways.

Enter the trail of the Gulf Kebir in the Libyan desert. Here you'll find Maddox, who goes back home and just can't stand the hypocrisy in the Church supporting the War effort. He eventually takes his own life right there in the Church. The Cliftons (George and Katherine). Fresh out of English Ivy League, George flies to Egypt with his newly wed, Katherine, to join Almasy and Maddox on the trail of the Gulf Kebir. Katherine Clifton turns out to be the nemesis of the English patient. Their adulterous love is of a self-destructive kind.

The dropping of the "A" bomb on Japan eventually disenchants Kip. This just totally tears him up. Hanna eventually loses him. They all return home to new lives after the war.

This makes very good reading for those who don't like rushing books. The painstaking attempts by the author at describing the peculiarities of the African desert, Herodotus' accounts, Kip's bomb disarming operations, and the English patients' narratives, might turn out to be boring for some. But they are all part of what gives this book that edge that I enjoyed so much. It is surprising that this is a work of fiction. It really comes alive as you read on. I really must go back to this book once more.

A must read!

Rating:
Summary: A Spellbinding Web of Love
Review: The English Patient is Michael Ondaatje's masterpiece and one of the most hauntingly beautiful books of the twentieth century, evoking an eroticism and emotional connection with readers that many would not have believed possible. It is a novel that asks questions for which no answers exist; a poetic and multi-layered mystery that unravels slowly, only very gradually revealing its fatally wounded inner core of a love that could never be.

The English Patient takes place in World War II Italy. A man, the "English patient," his skin burnt to a crisp, lies dying in a makeshift hospital amid the ruins of an ancient monastery. The Canadian nurse who has stayed behind to care for him, Hana, is fighting demons of her own. As the novel opens, Hana and the English patient are alone but they are not alone for long. Soon, two bomb disposal experts and a mysterious man named Caravaggio arrive at the monastery. Caravaggio is a murky character with even murkier motives in life, but it is clear from the outset that he harbors a tremenous amount of rage at the capriciousness of life and that he carries with him a hidden agenda all his own.

Although, from the beginning, there is apparently no hope for the English patient's survival, Hana cares for him tenderly, bathing his rotting skin, even bestowing gentle and sincere kisses upon his burnt lips. Perhaps if she can heal him, she might have one more chance at healing herself. The English patient cannot drink, he cannot speak, he can remember nothing. He reminds Hana of other men, countless men, she has seen die during this terrible war. Afraid that her own presence might contribute to the specter of death, Hana wonders, "I must be a curse. Anybody who loves me--who gets close to me--is killed."

The bomb disposal squad includes a handsome Sikh named Kip. When Hana finds herself attracted to him, she resists the attraction, feeling that the curse she unwittingly places on the lives of others could affect Kip as well. When the English patient is given access to a book found near his body, a very old, leather-bound volume of Herodotus, his memories begin to return. As Hana reads to him he remembers fragments, flashes, nuances. He dreams. Enough to tantalize but not enough to tell us everything...at first.

The deatils of what the English patient remembers are the threads of love and betrayal that weave the poetic and lyrical tapestry of this gorgeous and heartbreaking story, so I will not give them away here. The skeletal outline, however, becomes clear very early in the book. The English patient is not really English at all, but Hungarian. He is a Hungarian count, named Laszlo de Almasy who was sent to Egypt, attached to the Royal Geographic Society as a pilot. A pilot who flew over the desert making maps for research purposes as well as maps that could also be used by the English during the war.

In Cairo, before fate strikes one of its cruelest blows, Almasy meets an energic British woman named Katherine Clifton. Although newly-married, Katherine is not happy with her husband, Geoffrey. Her attraction to Almasy is immediate, as is his to her. Later, when the two find themselves alone in the desert, they will be called upon to confront their love. Their decision will have lasting repercussions for both of them.

Almasy is a man who, in life, as well as in death, conceals rather than reveals. It was Katharine and Katharine, only, who, with her energy and her zest for life, could release all the pent-up passions of Almasy. Without her, he becomes withdrawn once again. His personality is perfectly suited to the slow unraveling of the mystery of The English Patient. For it is a mystery, and one that can only be exposed by the charred man who lies in the bed in the ruined monastery. Little by little, Almasy remembers and the pieces become clear. As they do, the lives of these four people, Hana, Kip, Caravaggio and Almasy become more and more entwined.

The English Patient is a labyrinth of a novel, yet it has a skeletal quality as well. Perhaps that is because Ondaatje's prose is a perfect reflection of the love shared by Almasy and Katherine: so lyrical, so poetic, so gossamer in its beauty that it feels as though one breath would be enough to cause the entire thing to simply dissipate before our very eyes. The plot is not a linear one; Ondaatje fades back in time, then loops forward to the present, then fades back again. But the story is so perfectly-crafted, so beautifully and hearbreakingly told, that nothing could flow more easily. Ondaatje works his magic slowly, quietly, but surely unraveling the web that comes to bind these four tragically wounded and disparate lives.

The English Patient is a book that will, without a doubt, withstand the rigors of the test of time. It is a lavishly poetic love story and one that touches the depths of love and romance inherent in the human heart like no other.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible Read
Review: This book is a touching story about the truth of love, and the impossibility of a doomed romance. I really enjoyed the read, and thought that all in all it was a touchong book. While The English Patient gets long-winded at times, all in all I really enjoyed the book.