The English Patient

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. 

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.” 

-Michael Ondaatje

There are moments when I think taking time off is worth it just so I can set aside the space to read books like The English Patient. The language is lush and poetic, while still retaining a bit of blunt cruelty. I wish there were more books out there like this one. Books about the nature of relationships, time, coincidence, violence, loss, belonging. To be emotionally accurate is, at least to me, what literature should embody.

I watched the movie after finishing the novel. It’s a wonderful translation, albeit not exactly a full one (the ending really got the shaft). I wonder why so many people despise it so much. It is a bit slow, but so is the source material, and much of the pacing is the very point of the story. I wish people would stop referring to movies like this as ‘pretentious’ - what does that even mean? 

Both book and movie make you think. About the images that endure after war. The brief moments that fill up a greater space than non-stop action could ever buy. Many call the novel a ‘romance’ or ‘love story.’ Perhaps a better descriptor is that this is a novel about manifestations of love. How often it bleeds through the boundaries we set. So one learns to not view individual stories through facts. Instead, Ondaatje shows how love leans into the environment in which it is built. And how easily that crumbles.