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Label: audible.com Manufacturer: audible.com Publisher: audible.com Studio: audible.com Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen. A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient garnered the Booker Prize for author Ondaatje. The poet and novelist has also written In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family. Product Description: Set at the end of World War II, this novel explores the lives of four very disparate people who find themselves holed up together in a ruined villa north of Florence as the war retreats around them. The author was awarded the 1992 Booker Prize for this book. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Ponderously slow and overblown--an unreal world of poetryI arrived with high expectations: this novel won the Booker no less, and I adored the movie. Unfortunately I disliked the book for the very reasons I loved the movie: it is an epic, poetic, sweeping vision of romance. For three hours on screen one can be carried away in this way. But for 300 pages? Ondaatje asks to much of us. The characters do not speak to one another or think, unless it is in the most meticulously floral language. There is not an inelegant passage in the book! ... Read More Rating:  - Words have a power, Caravaggio...This was the book that helped me find my "voice" as a writer. The intense, unique, exquisite, seemingly random details Ondaatje uses to convey characterization, motivation, and mood continue to amaze me each time I read his works, but THIS novel has the ring of poetry in every sentence. The movie is an entirely different animal, and it HAS to be, because Ondaatje's power lies in his descriptions; his similes and metaphors; his own private way of viewing the human experience--not in the ... Read More Rating: - Hauntingly BeautifulFew books are felt as much as read, but "The English Patient" falls into this category. Like the film, it is hauntingly beautiful, but for different reasons. The story of people haunted by love and war, their damaged souls converging at a villa in Italy, remains, but the focus and method in which the story is told on paper is spellbinding and stunning. The passages are like water moving to and fro over rocks, shifting back and forth in time so that the beauty beneath can still be seen, ... Read More Rating: - Gorgeous prose weaves these lives togetherHow fortunate I was years ago when the film, The English Patient, was two weeks from release and a friend said, 'Oh, the movie is based on the novel. I think you'd like it....' I bought the book the next night and stayed up late reading it. Ondaatje sees the world through a poet's eyes, and he gives us artistic renderings of people and places in a rich time in history. This novel would definitely be included in my list of Top 20 favorites. Ondaatje is a writer's writer.... Rating: - Poetically beautifulOndaatje's prose is lyrical and poetic. More than anything, Ondaatje creates an atmoshpere that is as much a presence in this book than any single character. The story delves into the lives of four people living in a war-damaged Italian monastery as World War II ends. Hana, a nurse, attempts to nurse the English patient back to life. Caravaggio, Hana's childhood friend, and Kip, a skillful bomb difuser, make up the rest of the cast of characters. Beautifully and evocatively written but slow at times. ... Read More |
