- Hardcover: 307 pages
- Publisher: Knopf, New York; 3rd Edition edition (1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 7018982421
- ISBN-13: 978-7018982429
- ASIN: 0679416781
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (231 customer reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, Brilliant,
By richard_t "richard_t" (Overseas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The English Patient. (Paperback)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unfold it, it's worth it....,
By Marianne (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The English Patient. (Paperback)
This, as my teacher told us, is a novel one must reread every five years or so.Not a quick or easy read, The English Patient one of those books written in language so distilled, so concentrated, that one phrase can be explicated for pages. Its images, many of which I do not yet understand and many of which I'm sure I missed this time through, slip in and out of your consciousness long after you've finished the novel. The effect is that of someone tugging gently on your sleeve and saying "hey, pay attention -- this is important, this is what meaning is made of." The story is that of 4 characters who have come to inhabit a bombed-out, ruined and abandoned Italian villa towards the end of world war 2. With supreme skill as a storyteller, Ondaatje dips us into their pasts, so that we are made aware of their stories snapshot by snapshot; this is particularly true of the mysterious nameless faceless 'English patient', a severe burn victim with a deep, secretive history. There is such power in this novel I'd like to bottle its spirit, its poetry and its beauty, and carry it with me. This book is IMPORTANT to me. I cannot say any more than that.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Descriptions of Beauty,
By A Customer
This review is from: The English Patient (Hardcover)
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........
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