Yes, it seems that I’m going to a phase of reading books that were adapted to film in the 90s. Which is an interesting phase to be in, I guess. But that’s not the point of this review. We’re here to talk about The English Patient (the book, not the award-winning film. Just to make that clear).

In the midst of WWII, in an abandoned Italian villa, a nurse (Hana) takes care of a badly burnt man. And when I say “badly burnt”, I mean basically that he was almost carbonized. Apparently nobody can identify him because of how burnt he is. Besides him and the nurse, there is a thief (called David Caravaggio. Yes, like the painter) and an Indian sapper, Kip.

The book has a non-linear narration, which deals with all of these characters’ past and how they got into that place. We learn about the Patient’s relationship with a married woman, Katherine Clifton, and how the affair drove her husband crazy. Hana is a Canadian girl who decided to be a nurse in the war after her father died there. Caravaggio was tortured by the Italian intelligence. Kip decides to stay in the villa to help the people there defuse all the possible bombs that could be planted in the grounds.

In the Patient, everyone in the house sees what they want to see. Hana sees a hero, Caravaggio a fellow former-soldier, and Kip sees another outsider. And those assumptions also shape the way in which they relate to the burnt man. I think it’s interesting, because that reveals as much about their personalities as the flashbacks we get about them.

I liked the way in which this book was written, because it’s interesting as a narrative technique. And it allows the author to show the backgrounds of the different characters. And there’s also the question that all this stories are, in the end, connected by the idea of Love. All of them are lovers, of people, or ideals, or whatever. And they are all in the villa trying to heal as much as the Patient. The characters in the novel try to pass over the boundaries human beings have set since the past: nationality, religion and culture. In a way, the novel tries to show that all those limits are an invention, that in the end, we’re all human beings and that’s what matters in the end. And choosing to set his story in these times, which are probably the cruelest any human being has ever been, gives a hint at what is the true essence of human nature. Ondaatje here is pretty much an optimist, as he seems to think that love is bigger than war and all that comes with it.

Ondaatje’s prose is beautiful. It struck me when I read Coming Through Slaughter earlier this year, and it struck me again as I read this book. I don’t know how to explain this, but it feels a little as if he is creating music with the words. Some sentences left me breathless, and made me repeat them out loud, to taste them, in a way.

So yes, I'd recommend this book. But is one of those you have to be very focused to read, because of all the switching POVs.