Book Review: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient is the story of four people brought together by war. Hana, the English Patient, Caravaggio and Kip all end up in the same crumbling Italian Villa.

The story moved slowly, lazily. Not slow as in boring or lazy as in poorly written, but slow like a Sunday afternoon in the sun, like laying down on the couch for a nap, like watching proceedings through a haze of morphine. It was beautifully written and so evocative that I could see Hana wandering the fallen halls of the villa alone at night.

I love the way the character’s stories intertwine. As we learn more about one of them we inevitably learn more about them all and what brought them all together. The move away and come together again in a kind of literary dance.

I was only slightly disappointed by the ending. The ending that I wanted to happen would have put too sweet a tip on it, but that doesn’t stop me still wanting it. Like that last spoon of ice cream when you’re already full. The ending came too soon for me, I could have kept reading for twice as long about these four people and their histories. They all still had so much to tell, I felt like we barely scratched the surface.

I could have spent many more long lonely days in the villa with these characters. Below is a quote from the book that describes the way I felt reading . It is a perfect paragraph of self-description.

She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.

4 out of 5 unexploded bombs

Have you read The English Patient? Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought!