I’ve not seen this done before and it worked really well. Hana – a nurse with a past, hiding from lifeĬaravaggio – the author gives a clever reference to a Caravaggio painting, as part of a character profile.

I was brilliant in my youth but somehow I always get beaten by my grandbabies just as I was by their mum. You know the one, you scatter cards over the table,face down, you turn over two cards and try to find a match. I hadn’t realised the memory game I play was so ancient. How the time has to be right for things to ‘click’ even though you may have met or nearly met at another time and place. Or how about ‘…Bluebottles stumble in the air and bang into humans as if slamming into a wall, then retreat unconcerned.’Īmongst so many, I think my favourite extract is a view of how lovers and friends can experience deja vu, imagined or real previous meetings. A scurry in her mind like a mouse in the ceiling, a moth on the night window.’ She realised that for more thanfive minutes she had been looking at the porousness of the paper, the crease at the corner of page 17 which someone had folded over as a mark. How lovely is this ‘…The book lay on her lap. The words evoke images of a damaged hot dry landscape, horrors of war and historic damaged architecture. This is a story of deception, memory, old loves, friendships and romances interlink in a confusion of gorgeous phrases, chapters and scenes. This frees me to immerse myself in the writer’s original work and, importantly, my own imagination. I think I must have read it years ago, but I’m not surprised I’d forgotten.īefore I watch any movie or TV adaptations I try to read the book. This book has been on my reading list for a while, once I started reading it rang a bell. The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire – a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is English, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal.

No Spoiler Book Review of the Beautiful, Curious, Booker Prize Winning – The English Patient, Michael Ondaatjeīlurb: The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining patient.

The english patient author