Celestine's review (The English Patient)

Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient is a beautifully written story of four lost souls who have been deeply affected by the horrors of World War II. It recounts the lives of Hana the nurse, Caravaggio the thief, Kip the sapper, and the mysterious English patient, who remains unnamed and unidentifiable throughout most of the novel. These four characters come together in a remote Italian villa, wherein they try to recover from psychological and emotional (and in the English patient’s case, physical) effects of the war.

The novel is layered, surreal, and intricately woven to the point of perfection. In fact, it’s one of the most well written books I’ve ever read.  My favorite part of the book was not the plot, but the poetic, dream-like prose that Ondaatje employs. Whether he’s describing Kip’s relationship with his family or Hana’s love for books, he does it in a beautifully poetic way. The novel also has a nonlinear plot, which contributes to the novel’s layered, woven effect. It shifts perspective and tense constantly, but somehow Ondaatje does this seamlessly.

I also really enjoyed the commentary involving war, which served as a central theme in the novel. There are plenty of war novels that praise war and focus on the positive aspects of it (although I personally don’t think there are any), but The English Patient does just the opposite. We see how World War II has negatively impacted all four characters, and society as a whole. It has turned Kip into a constantly cautious soldier. The English patient has become passionless and broken. Caravaggio is self-conscious, a changed man. Hana is now traumatized and guarded. They are all victims of war, without a home or sanctuary or loved ones to provide refuge. They can, however, unite in their quest for self-identity, happiness, and love, all of which have been stripped away from them by the war.

My only problem with the book is that I couldn’t really connect with the characters (especially the English patient), which led to less curiosity about their history, which happened to be the bulk of the novel. The English patient’s story takes up a large portion of the book, and unfortunately I was never captivated by his love affair with Katharine or his adventures in the desert. As a result, I couldn’t appreciate the book as much as some might. At times, I found myself trudging through the novel, wearily counting the pages as I went along, uninterested in what happened next. For me, The English Patient was like a three-hundred-and-two page poem: beautiful, yes, but not captivating throughout.

Overall, I enjoyed The English Patient much more than I expected. Prior to reading the novel, I was somehow led to believe that it was just a sappy romance that would bore me to death (this is probably thanks to the awful things I’ve heard about the movie version). But it had a lot more substance and credibility than that. I might have enjoyed the book more if I had been able to connect with the characters, but overall this didn’t taint my opinion of the book too much. The English Patient stands out because of Ondaatje’s beautiful writing style, which left me awestruck on more than one occasion.