THE ENGLISH PATIENT. The book!
April 8th 2008 05:35
THE ENGLISH PATIENT from Michael Ondaatje
ISBN: 0-679-77737-7
Published in 1992 by Vintage Books USA.
Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller.
The English patient is a fiction based on historical figures, which gradually reveals the tormented history of 4 main characters, damaged by the dramatic events occurring before and during the Second World War.
The set up of the story jungles with the fragmentation of memories from the main character, the Count Laszlo de Almasy called the English patient, in the magnificent desert of Sahara, and the present time occurring in an old ruined Villa located in the south of Italy.
The English patient survives a plane crash in the Libyan Desert and is saved by Bedouins before being under the care of a young French-Canadian nurse, called Hanna. The count was burned “beyond recognition”... pure carbon” (p109) and in the need of intensive care, they decide to stay in the destroyed convent while the rest of the convoy of patients and nurses move to a safer location.
Slowly we are introduced to Hanna, we learn about the losses of her father and her lover, her immunity to death while nursing dying soldiers. “I know death now...I know all the smells...”p83.
She is only 20 years, thinks she is cursed as anyone who loved her has died, and questions her ability to feel again.
The dynamic in the Villa changes with the arriving of David Caravaggio, which interestingly has connection with both of them. He was a friend of Hanna’s father, and served the British foreign intelligence service. Caravaggio was captured by the German troops, tortured and both thumbs cut off, we discover that since then his obsessive search for the mysterious German spy which he thinks is responsible for his fate, and his convictions that the English Patient is his spy.
Another important character is an Indian Sikh, called Kip who erupts in the Villa while Hanna is playing Bach on the Brocken piano... The Germans before abandoning houses used to hide mines in pianos. He works for the British military as a sapper, and is also tormented with personal conflicts duelling with peaceful beliefs while his anti-British brother is in jail.
So far we discovered 4 protagonists, tormented, in physical and emotional pain. Some looking for truth, some waiting for death, the glimpse of a romance into Hanna and Kip’s lives, the search for this mysterious German spy and the memories of the English patient carry us all the way through the book.
The shadow of the passionate love of Almasy and Katherine haunts the whole story, silently; it is what brings them all together.
A thief, a nurse, a sapper and an explorer, 4 different choices of lives, 4 strong decisions shaping their own destiny in a time of chaos, 4 inexorably committed souls to their beliefs. They are not passive characters waiting for life to happen to them, but the consequences are great.
One of the main plots is the search of Caravaggio for his German spy, the whole way through the reading we wonder, is it him? Is he the count?
Kip is looking for a reason not to hate the westerners, a peace of mind. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings violently hit him in a spiritual sense, and change irrevocably his destiny. We find out later, his return to India, married and doctor.
“He knows the soldier is right. They would never have dropped such a bomb on a white nation.” P286
But above all, it is the Count passionate and tortured love that he bears for Katherine Clifton that is really the centre of all.
Katherine is married to Geoffrey, both English, newlywed; they both meet with the Count Almasy in the Sahara to join the exploration group working on drawing a map of the desert.
The stories of Herodotus follow us at each corner of a new chapter. It shapes and accompanies both lovers from the starts as...”With words, he falls in love with her.”
Almasy’s love is intense, tortured, extreme, and hidden. He is a man of few words, she is a woman who “always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas” he “thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.” P238
Their love story has repercussions going beyond the 2 characters and affect not only the close characters, but also as the story tells us later, as its importance inside the British intelligence service.
A dramatic ending brings the husband, Geoffrey to kill himself and try at the same time to kill his wife and the Count.
2 strong spirits, stubborn and full of pride, she will end the affair for honour, he will close his self and pretend to not care.
It is only at the end, when he carries her to the Cave of Swimmers that they will finally open their heatrs, let the walls down, and surrender to each other.
The English patient is a marvellous novel, written with an outstanding style. One can immerse itself completely and feel the passion of the two lovers, smell the dryness of the desert and the danger of the war. It is poetry in prose, nectar to enjoy, savouring at each word, and each sentence.
A story of love, honour, suffering and strength that not even death can alter, the characters are beyond death, it is time of war, it is everywhere around them, so close to them but still living each moment as the most precious one, fully aware of its vulnerability and precariousness, among all the Count shows us love beyond love.
ISBN: 0-679-77737-7
Published in 1992 by Vintage Books USA.
Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller.
The English patient is a fiction based on historical figures, which gradually reveals the tormented history of 4 main characters, damaged by the dramatic events occurring before and during the Second World War.
The set up of the story jungles with the fragmentation of memories from the main character, the Count Laszlo de Almasy called the English patient, in the magnificent desert of Sahara, and the present time occurring in an old ruined Villa located in the south of Italy.
Slowly we are introduced to Hanna, we learn about the losses of her father and her lover, her immunity to death while nursing dying soldiers. “I know death now...I know all the smells...”p83.
She is only 20 years, thinks she is cursed as anyone who loved her has died, and questions her ability to feel again.
The dynamic in the Villa changes with the arriving of David Caravaggio, which interestingly has connection with both of them. He was a friend of Hanna’s father, and served the British foreign intelligence service. Caravaggio was captured by the German troops, tortured and both thumbs cut off, we discover that since then his obsessive search for the mysterious German spy which he thinks is responsible for his fate, and his convictions that the English Patient is his spy.
So far we discovered 4 protagonists, tormented, in physical and emotional pain. Some looking for truth, some waiting for death, the glimpse of a romance into Hanna and Kip’s lives, the search for this mysterious German spy and the memories of the English patient carry us all the way through the book.
The shadow of the passionate love of Almasy and Katherine haunts the whole story, silently; it is what brings them all together.
A thief, a nurse, a sapper and an explorer, 4 different choices of lives, 4 strong decisions shaping their own destiny in a time of chaos, 4 inexorably committed souls to their beliefs. They are not passive characters waiting for life to happen to them, but the consequences are great.
One of the main plots is the search of Caravaggio for his German spy, the whole way through the reading we wonder, is it him? Is he the count?
Kip is looking for a reason not to hate the westerners, a peace of mind. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings violently hit him in a spiritual sense, and change irrevocably his destiny. We find out later, his return to India, married and doctor.
“He knows the soldier is right. They would never have dropped such a bomb on a white nation.” P286
But above all, it is the Count passionate and tortured love that he bears for Katherine Clifton that is really the centre of all.
Katherine is married to Geoffrey, both English, newlywed; they both meet with the Count Almasy in the Sahara to join the exploration group working on drawing a map of the desert.
The stories of Herodotus follow us at each corner of a new chapter. It shapes and accompanies both lovers from the starts as...”With words, he falls in love with her.”
Almasy’s love is intense, tortured, extreme, and hidden. He is a man of few words, she is a woman who “always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas” he “thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.” P238
Their love story has repercussions going beyond the 2 characters and affect not only the close characters, but also as the story tells us later, as its importance inside the British intelligence service.
A dramatic ending brings the husband, Geoffrey to kill himself and try at the same time to kill his wife and the Count.
2 strong spirits, stubborn and full of pride, she will end the affair for honour, he will close his self and pretend to not care.
It is only at the end, when he carries her to the Cave of Swimmers that they will finally open their heatrs, let the walls down, and surrender to each other.
The English patient is a marvellous novel, written with an outstanding style. One can immerse itself completely and feel the passion of the two lovers, smell the dryness of the desert and the danger of the war. It is poetry in prose, nectar to enjoy, savouring at each word, and each sentence.
A story of love, honour, suffering and strength that not even death can alter, the characters are beyond death, it is time of war, it is everywhere around them, so close to them but still living each moment as the most precious one, fully aware of its vulnerability and precariousness, among all the Count shows us love beyond love.
| 93 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
