The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

This was one of the Bookers, which I had seen as a film prior to reading it as part of this process, though I have only a rather vague memory of the film and so, as a disclaimer, I had formed no particular prejudice regarding this book.  It’s also worth noting that I am also in process of trying to watch all the Best Picture Oscar-winning films and this particular book and film fulfil a tick on both lists (I am fully aware that it may seem like my life is filled with working my way through lists, a point highlighted by various friends and family with various amounts of amusement/bemusement – in my defence, I just find it a helpful way to guide watching and reading works that have been considered the best of year’s work in a particular field by a group of judges – and obviously I don’t limit myself purely to these lists!)  Anyway ‘The English Patient’ turned out to be a particular highlight in the line-up of the Booker winners which I relished reading.

It was a delightfully well-formed novel with its story woven expertly through reminiscence and present tense description of four characters who had by various circumstances ended up residing in a deserted and partially bombed monastery in Italy in the aftermath of WW2.  There is the ‘English Patient’ a severely burnt man who is bed bound in a room upstairs, cared for by Hana, a nurse who refused, along with the patient, to move on with the rest of the military hospital.  Caravaggio an old family friend of Hana’s and then Kip, an Indian soldier who signed up and worked under Lord Suffolk in bomb deposal, joins them.  From their daily lives to the vast reaches of their reminisces the writing conveys the atmosphere of its wide-range of settings exquisitely from the desert plains during exploration prior to WW2 to a Indian soldier’s integration into a bomb deposal team in England during WW2.  It achieved the difficult task of navigating through memory and consequent identity of these characters to their relationships while staying in the Italian villa.

In addition to it being a pleasure to read with its fragments of story it was also fascinating in terms of giving an insight into desert exploration, espionage, bomb deposal while touching on themes of love, identity, loyalty, war and the effects of traumatic circumstances and how different people respond.    Yet it didn’t feel epic in its proportions, in fact its strength was portraying so much in such a sensitive, intimate, people-sized novel.  And I can’t help but mention that I find it completely unbelievable that this gem had to share the award with Peter Carey’s ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ as in my view there was absolutely no contest and that this should have been the rightful winner, but I guess that is what makes awards so compelling and controversial!