Michael Ondaatje

Few books are felt as much as read, but The English Patient falls into this category. Like the film, it is hauntingly beautiful, but for slightly different reasons. The story of people haunted by love and war, their damaged souls converging at a villa in Italy, remains, but the focus and method in which the story is told on paper is filled with poetic passages, and stunning beauty.

The passages are like water moving to and fro over rocks, shifting back and forth in time so that the beauty beneath can still be seen, but as a shimmering mirage in the desert. It is a strange instance where it is almost recommended that you see the film first in order to appreciate more clearly in your mind the characters as their stories unfold.

Whereas the film focused more on the burned Almasy and his memories of the unending African desert, where he would meet the enigmatic and beautiful Katherine Clifton, sealing the fate which would leave him a charred and hollow shell of his former self, Hanah is the focal point of Ondaatje's lovely poetic prose in the novel. You can almost feel the ghosts hovering over each character as Ondaatje paints a masterpiece with words rather than a brush.

Deeply romantic and lyrical, it is the same story as told in the film, but a more impressionistic and less linear portrait of love and loss. The book is like a delicate flower just beneath the water's surface, its beauty evident but achingly kept just out of reach. The film brought the flower into the sun so we could enjoy its texture and fragrance in more visceral fashion. Both are magnificent, just a different picture of the same flower.

If you loved the film, you must read the book. It is a hauntingly beautiful novel different from anything else you'll ever read. Literary fiction can often be dry and unrewarding, a lot of beautiful words and lovely phrases meant to impress us, but all too often leaving us cold and disinterested. Such is not the case here. This is a perfect storm of prose and story achieved only once by Ondaatje. A masterwork of rich and evocative prose that will surely touch the heart, an organ of fire.… (mer)