The English Patient

Alright. So. Objectively, I can tell you why this is a good book. There’s a reason it won not only the Booker Prize, but the Golden Booker, naming it the best Booker winner of the prize’s first 50 years. The prose is lyrical. The characters embody very different responses to trauma. It explores several kinds of love in interesting ways. It has plenty to say about nation, identity, race, war, and all that jazz.

So I get it. I understand why it’s considered great. I just could not get into it. For whatever reason, I never really cared about the characters, which made it hard to care about much of anything that was happening to them. Is that because Elaine Benes permanently poisoned The English Patient for me with her scathing review of the film decades ago? Honestly, it might be.

Book author: Michael Ondaatje