In the category of
Canadian Literature,
Bartleby and the Scriveners are pleased to select
Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.
Is it possible for a bestseller to be an underrated book? Published in 1997, this book was more or less responsible for launching Ondaatje, until then known mostly in the Toronto literary scene, into a new realm of international stardom and movie deals. Many people know the film adapation, in its own right a remarkable piece of cinema, even if it doesn't resemble the book very much in a formal sense. But I feel gratified to have encountered this book first, and to see in it the real achievement of Ondaatje's career--a book that achieves solid craftsmanship in Ondaatje's surgically precise linguistic style, along with a riveting, complex plot that unfolds piece by piece like a puzzle. Ondaatje has numerous brilliant works: wrenchingly potent lyric poetry in
The Cinnamon Peeler, experimental writing in
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, improvisatory writing in
In the Skin of a Lion, the list goes on. But
The English Patient is where Ondaatje puts it all together, and it remains his best work to this day.
