Goodness gracious me, I have such a line-up of fun books waiting for me! But for the moment--I just finished Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.
The movie was out when I first started working in a bookstore, and was finishing up my English lit degree. Women were buying the book in droves, but having read Ondaatje in school I understood when some were disappointed with it. It's postmodern, and those structures are often fragmented, to reflect the idea that we can't ever fully know anything, to reflect the way we actually take in information and see the world.
Plus Odaatje started as a poet, so his writing can be oscure. I often stopped and re-read lines, trying to understand--which is fine with mod/postmodernists, cause they want you to be aware of the act of reading.
But I loved the book, was totally engrossed in it. If you haven't seen or read it, it's about the end of WWII in Italy, and a Canadian nurse taking care of a totally burned man, in a villa. They're joined by a man who used to be a thief and was employed as a spy in the war. And a Sikh "sapper"--a soldier who defuses bombs. I loved all four.
I liked it more than the movie, cause there was less melodrama; but I understand most of Minghella's choices. And he certainly made it more commercial, with a heavy focus on the back story love affair.
The one important change was how they parted at the end. [Mild spoiler:] In the book the sapper, who has endangered his life spending every nerve-wracking moment of the war defusing bombs, making the countryside safe for Europeans, is completely undone by the bombing of Hiroshima. It causes an insurmountable rift between him and his companions, and he leaves. Probably a good example of why we need published authors who are people of color; because they know better than white people how race matters, and write about difference in a more emotionally true fashion.
Another thing missing from the movie was our discovery of the reason why the nurse is so attached to the burned patient.* I
totally wept. (It didn't help that an orchestral version of "Unchained Melody" was playing while I read.)
Judging by Goodreads this is a love it or hate it book, so I can't lightly recommend it. But I loved it.
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* SPOILER
We knew her father was killed in the war, but find out he was burned; he had to be left behind by his unit and, as far as she knows, died alone.
