THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje

Note: I am not a paid reviewer, and I have purchased this title to read for my personal enjoyment.

A badly burned English patient lives out his dying days in an abandoned Italian villa in the later stages of WW2 with his nurse Hana, and in the company of Caravaggio, a roguish spy who knows Hana’s family from pre-war Canada, and Kip, an Indian unexploded bomb-disassembler. The narrative presents Hana’s, Caravaggio’s and Kip’s war experiences and lingering torments, but the book’s fulcrum is the English Patient’s story of his explorations of the Libyan desert during which he found the illicit love of his life. A terrific contrast is struck as The English Patient’s story exposes his surprising past and moves toward finality, while Hana and Kip become lovers and represent hope for the future. The story is told in a dreamy style of writing, more so than any other title on this list. It’s not only the prose, but shifting narrative images like a kaleidoscope, and sometimes paragraphs which are constructed with sentences about seemingly unconnected subjects, untethered almost, but when considered closely make a unified thought that moves the story forward. Or it can be in rapid omniscient point of view shifts when the protagonists are proximate. Reading this book forced me to slow down, and soak in the words and meaning to benefit, which is worth it when it’s done this well.