The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje
ISBN 978-0679745204
Proud to admit that I picked up this tattered paperback in a secondhand bookstore in the White Mountains for a dollar, I received my money’s worth a thousand times over. Secondhand books are cost-effective and environmentally friendly; I think of past owners who’ve read the story with me and feel a kinship with them. What were they doing while they were on this chapter, where were they? I wonder how they came to buy the book, what they thought of the main character, if they were interested in the historical back-story. When looking to purchase books, used or new, I want ones that are worthy of staying on my bookshelves for the long run. Among the heavily used section is a decrepit copy of Anna Karenina, with pages that are yellowed and curled and a cover I had to reattach with tape. I also bought this for a dollar while on an antique shopping trip with my mother. Some only make it through my hands to be passed on to friends or the book donation box at the grocery store but my goal is to fill my shelves with books I love and I got that in this—maybe the prior owner(s?) had a different taste!
The novel depicts a rare situation in which the trauma of the events of the second World War force people to interact with each other frankly and without pretense in terms of the usual suspects: background, race, sex or stature. Always a glutton for honesty, this immediately reeled me in to find out how these people fair in this dangerous experiment in human communication. Four very unique characters find themselves living in an abandoned monestary turned hospital in Italy, existing on local goods and small pleasures they’re able to glean from the idyllic countryside. The aftershocks of war torn lives quietly contrast the beauty and charm of Tuscany, scarred by war but nevertheless still enchanting- much like the woman and three men who find themselves co-existing between the same walls, marking time until scars are healed enough to move forward. I’ve heard the phrase there is “beauty in brokenness” and I find it to be true in the case of Hana, Almasy, Caravaggio and Kip. Ondaatje writes each of them as broken in their own way and still find courage of simply living again—beginning with living simply. Small pleasures fill the day as they slowly attempt at unraveling the big picture of their pasts. Possibilities of lies, espionage, love affairs are recalled as if from the smoky residue of a dream gone past. It’s difficult to know what to believe about laws and war between countries, when matters of the heart interrupt us.
A surprising bonus to this love story was the inclusion of ancient Middle Eastern philosophies, poems and tales of wanderers’ geographical recordings of the harsh lands. Ondaatje clearly has spent time in Egypt and knows much about it, which he successfully transfers to his reader through a clear voice and emitting its beauty in the details.
The English Patient shared the 1992 Man Booker Prize with Barry Unsworth for Sacred Hunger. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, promotes the finest in fiction by annually rewarding the very best book by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. It also won the 1992 Canada’s Governor General’s Award.
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