The English Patient
Ratings65
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings65
Average rating3.7
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning
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Reviews with the most likes.
This book was nothing like what I expected. Though the basic plot follows what I had imagined it to be, I thought it to deal more with the locales rather than the people. I'm not sure why that is. I found it to be an engaging novel and easy to follow despite its non-linear format. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in realistic romance, World War II-era fiction, and a mysterious plot.
Four stuck in limbo
waiting for the war to end
new horrors to come.
I have given this a 2, but I really didn't like it very much at all. The book is highly rated, so the fault must be with me, but it felt like a collection of bits of research on bomb disposal, deserts, Herodotus, within an unconvincing story on love and loss.
Amazing. I went into thinking that because of the film, the might be over-hyped.
Dear reader, it wasn't. Admittedly, I haven't read much literary fiction so I don't have a barometer to measure The English Patient against, but I have to say that this is one of the finer novels I've read.
4.5 stars.
