Michael Ondaatje The English Patient

“The story is a poem disguised in prose”, says the introduction to the 2007 edition of this novel. It is exactly that.

The story has no order or structure; arguably a mereprogression in the lives of our four characters. The book is a true exhibition of the author’s admirable ability to narrate: a gripping story where nothing happens.

Four people: a middle aged man, a burnt body of anexplorer, a twenty year old nurse and a sapper from Punjab; all in a lonely landscape of rural Italy with nothing to do but wait, breathe, observe and let the emotions of the terrible war flow back to the place where they will stay for the rest of their lives.

Things can happen at 2am in the morning as well as at midday or dawn: there is no time or obligation, just the sun, the sky, a library and candles.

What is the story about?

Objectively about nothing.

Just like life.

What have you done during yourweekend?

Nothing.

Ask me again and I’ll tell you what made me laugh or cry.

Sentences are not precise.

No, not necessarily, not always.

“White sound” – …? Yes, a sound that makes you blind, oh yes, you just realise three sentences later that the expression was actually a metaphor.

Michael Ondaatje takes you through their experiences as paintbrush strokes across an empty canvas. Images, scenes… an impression, a thought… the narrators vary, the four characters remember the past that brought them here. It establishes the tone: memories, flashes – you might hear the same story twice, the second time with another hint of emotion.

You are taken to the desert of Libya across the golden sands and into the sweaty rooms of Cairo and then back to the valley in Tuscany, mined, shelled and abandoned. You are immersed in the war, crossing muddy fields at night under the light of bombing fire. You experience the horror of hospitals, nurses expected to act like priests accompanying – constantly – the souls imprisoned in their broken bodies to their death.

There are paragraphs that make you stop. Again?

It was just absolutely beautiful and exact. How did he manage to say that so well? …sentences you could rip off the book and put on the wall.

Amanda tweets as @amandsllu