Dear Readers,
When I read The English Patient for the first time in the 90s, I didn’t deserve it. Now, I think I’ve earned it.
The desert could not be claimed or owned
—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones,
and given a hundred shifting names.
— The English Patient
Ondaatje's novel won the Booker Prize in 1992. Did you read it then (if you were alive)?
The story joins four people who are trying to find peace in the aftermath of war. Hana, a Canadian nurse, is caring for her patient, a pilot who was burned beyond recognition. Her great family friend, Caravaggio, a thief and spy, comes to find Hana in a villa outside Florence. Soon, they are joined by an Indian sapper, he defuses bombs, named Kip.
All of the characters are out of place, lost near the end of the war, and looking for a way home. “The trouble with all of us is we are where we shouldn't be.”
I loved the novel the first time I read it. With my first twinges of wanting to be a writer, I tangled myself in sentences like, “All I ever wanted was a world without maps.” I was 19 years old. I hadn’t travelled much. I hadn’t had time to get lost or find myself, but I loved the sound of it.
More than 30 years later, in January, I re-read The English Patient. This, let me tell you, was a dramatic experience. I wept, I gasped, I marvelled, felt stunned, and was left undone — I can’t remember when I was so caught up and swept off by a book. It is stunning.
A novel is a relationship between a reader and a writer.
On this reading, I was able to bring much more to The English Patient. I still basked in the sun-soaked Italian villa, the wild flowers, the hidden art, the language of love, Hana’s grace, and Kip’s composure, but it was the scarred patient and the worn-out spy who resonated with me this time.
Caravaggio spoke to Hana one night, “about the tenderness towards every cell in a lover that comes when you discover your own mortality.” I needed to have a brush with death, cancer, to value life enough to understand that line.
"A novel is a mirror," Ondaatje writes.
I understood the fractured timelines of the book, why the tragic stories build and touch each other in 1939. The true sadness of war isn’t tallied at the end, it’s the beginning — the moment when war is declared. The point of no return.
I kept thinking about the war in the Middle East as I read. A world without maps? How much pain and suffering it would spare. I’ve had to witness many wars to understand the destruction that a line drawn on paper, a disagreement about a border, can bring.
I don’t wish for hard experiences, but they come with the kind of wisdom that is reflected in Ondaatje’s book. I’ve earned his words.
I loved re-reading this book. If you read it, or re-read, I wonder if you’ll be similarly knocked off your feet? I’d love to hear.
With much book love,
Claire
P.S.
My piece, I’m not the only one — assembled using more than 40 personal stories of women who have been affected by abortion laws in the United States after Roe v. Wade.
Norman Jewison had left us. He directed many notable films, but my favourite is Jesus Christ Superstar. A bunch of hippies pull up in a bus and stage a musical in 120-degree heat—it feels barely in control of itself in the best way. If you need more convincing, I give you Carl Anderson letting it rip as Judas.
Do you remember hearing about a princess in Dubai escaping? A new podcast by Madeleine Baran (In the Dark) and Heidi Blake has the full story — The Runaway Princesses. It gives a frightening window into how the world actually works.
Oh and if you are in Toronto, I’m interviewing Paul Lynch about his Booker-winning novel, Prophet Song. Reserve a spot with the Toronto Reference Library. If you can’t make it, don’t worry. My next letter will be about the interview.
This letter is monthly and will remain free. Thank you for reading.
Gosh - what a gut punch your poem delivers. Thank you for sharing. I’m reading The Heat’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne right now. Women’s lack of access to abortion in Ireland is a thread in this heart-wrenching tale about growing up as a closeted gay man. I’m just realizing this is the third book I’ve read in as many months that’s set in Ireland in a time when abortion was illegal. I live in Texas. . .
You’ve inspired me to go back