英国病人

Title: The English Patient
Author: Ondaatje, Michael (1943 - )
Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1992
320 p (hardback, first edition)
Read by: 09/10/2012, my collection
Genre: Fiction

Great writing! I would definitely have missed the book had not for the movie. On the flip side, I despise the movie after reading the book. However, without the latter, readers like me would lose this treasure. The lesser version of this creation only contrasts the original charm. The book, as the author said in an interview, is much freer in form than the movie. Thanks to the author’s consciousness of his readers, he kept a balance between the free running between times and not losing his readers.

The leading line is about life after the World War II, the scar and wound on all characters. Hana and Kip are the leading characters, if I have to pick. The English Patient Almasy is secondary, and his relationship with Katherine is secondary to his other life experience. What I love is the angle of the stories being told – the caring of a badly burned patient in a suburban abandoned Villa San Girolamo in Italy led to discovery of human of life after a traumatic war but in a much slow and deep perspective. My enjoyment for words and poetic description has been much satisfied. And the wisdom, here and there in the book, I have filled them in my spreadsheet. I can’t wait to fill more, so I sought out two more books of his.

Out of coincidence or the unknown arrangement, this book ended with Kip left Hana and everybody at the news of the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan. He never returned. This historical event is exactly where the plot of my previous reading The Great Fire started. Keith arrived in Japan after the bombs and was commissioned to record and write about life there. He and Helen started a new life from this. My reading can go in a loop. So is history. The loop can close at an unexpected time.