The English Patient reads like a dream. It takes place in a dilapidated Italian villa as World War II is ending. Hana, a nurse disillusioned by the war, is taking care of a badly burned patient that she believes to be an Englishman. She thought it unsafe to have him moved so she stayed with him. The English Patient, having forgotten his identity, flashes back to his past. He remembers a woman in his life, Katharine; his love for the desert and historical knowledge. As they only have each other to rely on, Hana finds that she is in love with him.
Caravaggio, a patient at a nearby hospital, hears of the nurse named Hana who stayed behind with a hopeless patient and remembers her from before the war. He, having suffered his own trials and tribulations during the war, comes to her Italian villa a damaged man. He is older, a talented thief, who knew Hana’s parents before the war and is perhaps a little in love with her. He quickly becomes acclimated to life in the villa, finding his own entertainment, even finding the identity of the English Patient.
Hana, Caravaggio and the English Patient collectively avoid going back to the real world or letting it come back to them. As they develop their own routines, a fourth character, Kip, finds them. Kip is a sapper who takes bombs apart for the army. He quickly develops a friendship with the English patient, sharing his love for history. He even forms a close relationship with Hana.
Though the book is called The English Patient one could argue that he isn’t the most important character in the book. Without him, Hana might have left the villa to go back to a real hospital; he is the reason all of the characters are staying in the villa. It can always be said that the characters are linked by their love for Hana. In some way, each of them is tied to her and relies on her presence.
We are introduced to each of the characters through gestures instead of explicit actions. Throughout the text, it is the little things that give away key points about each given characters. It is the small things that drive the plot. Doing this made the characters feel more real, like actual people. It made me care about each of them individually.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the technical aspects of bomb disposal from Kip. I did not realize that so many bombs were left after (and during) the war to be accidentally detonated by innocents. Through Kip and his mentor, Lord Suffolk, we are able to delve into the precise world of bombs and machines of war. We feel how stressful the job is, how much is relying on one person. When Kip gets to the villa, he immediately checks all of the rooms for objects embedded with bombs, paranoid that he’ll lose someone else to an oversight.
Nearly the entire novel is written in present tense, occasionally even when it flashes back to events in the past. This made every event feel alive, adding to the feeling that these were not just flashbacks but that the characters were reliving these memories again.
Ondaatje also brings in a rich, historical representation of Egypt’s deserts during WWII. The English Patient was one of a few men who were exploring the desert, looking for a specific city cited in many texts but never yet found. Hearing about how this links to Herodotus and even religious texts was very intriguing. I’ve not yet had a chance to go to Egypt but it is one of the few places where I feel I will be at home.
Exploring the atrocities of war is difficult to do but Ondaatje succeeds. Each of the four characters explores a different loss or facet of war. It changes them differently but they grow together.
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Filed under: Literature Reviews, Michael Ondaatje , 1001 Books To Read Before You Die, fiction, Michael Ondaatje, Read in 2009, The English Patient
