The English Patient review

[alobear]

 A while ago, I went through every Booker shortlist and noted down books that sounded potentially interesting.  The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje is one of the books I subsequently acquired, though it has been on my shelf for nearly two years.  I finally decided to read it this week, and persevered to the end over four days, despite not getting on very well with it.  My main problem with the book was that I didn't really understand either the plot or the theme.  Parts of it were very difficult to follow, and its fragmented and very loose structure made it confusing.  I'm glad I finished it, though, as the ending did pull things together to a certain extent, and offered something of a conclusion for at least one of the characters.

I just read the synopsis of the film version on Wikipedia, which made some interesting changes to the plot in order to give it more impact.  I had wondered, throughout reading the book, how it could have been made into a film, and what the adapters chose to change certainly make the story more comprehensible, although rather drastically altering a couple of its points.

I have come to the conclusion that I'm not as good at appreciating literature as I would like to think - this book was definitely a bit beyond me, and I find I generally prefer my reading material to be a bit more coherent.

Comments

[coldjwplay.livejournal.com]

Then perhaps you would enjoy my brother's favourite book, which I'm happy to recommend to you: it's called Green Eggs and Ham.

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

>not as good at appreciating literature as I would like to think

I'm not sure we need to assume there's something wrong with our appreciation simply because we don't happen to like a literary author's work. It's not wrong to prefer a coherent plot, and coherent plotting not incompatible with quality writing (as demonstretd by Austen and Trollope, to choose just two authors I happen to know we both appreciate).