The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Even though it was years and years ago that I saw it, I wish I'd read the book before seeing the movie made of The English Patient. It would likely have meant that I'd have despised the movie, but having seen it kept me putting my attention in certain places, and never seeing other aspects creeping up until it was too late.

The movie, of course, is a romance. The book, although it has romances in it, is not. It is about war, and its effects on people. How some are destroyed, and some think they have found themselves.

The irony of the title is not just that eponymous character may not be English, but that no one in the book is. Hana and Caravaggio come from Canada, (Caravaggio probably from somewhere else before that), Kip from India. Yet they are all in France at that certain time, having participated in the war effort for the English, as a nurse, a thief, a mine clearer. Englishness itself lingers over the scene of the book, but no one hails from the country for which they are in the war - they are all from the colonies.

Englishness is not well-defined - the sections on Kip are the most direct, but even in that case, it is a particular Englishman and his entourage, rather than Englishness as a whole. Still, Kip's mentor in disarming bombs comes to stand for what Englishness can be, to him. Kip sets himself up as a living reproach to a still-much-loved older brother, who went to jail rather than fight one day for the English.

Caravaggio has been destroyed in the service of the Empire, stealing secrets (quite literally), suffering horrible consequences, with no apparent concern from the people he was stealing them for. Hana loses her father and almost herself in the war, and has very specific reasons why she will not leave her badly burned patient to die alone.

The English Patient is the story of these four, and how they knit a small community out of the ashes of the destruction. Not in grand ways, in small ones, working through suspicion, formality, and pain. They create a world which no one who had not been through the conflagration would understand, and come to some sort of equilibrium, having seen the worst that they could see. Where simple patriotism has given way to weary resignation.

And then even that is shattered. The worst was yet to come. And I never saw it coming, most of the political aspects being excised when they made the movie. But once it had happened, nothing could ever be the same. I had never even seen Ondaatje laying the groundwork for that moment, but once it came, everything came together at once.

Does that make the book a metaphor for the double fuze [sic] bomb Kip has to figure out how to disarm? While I was paying attention to one fuze, everything else was surreptitiously burning towards this other source of an explosion.

The English Patient is well worth reading. But the part that is the lion's share of the movie is perhaps the smallest part of the book. I enjoyed the patient's stories, but was far more engrossed in what was going on in their little corner of France.

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

What becomes of us when all we know is death and killing, and that is taken away?

If that is the question being asked, the answer is not forthcoming. The book ends just before the war does, so we never get to see how any surviving characters would reintegrate into civilian life. From their worries, their neuroses, and what the experiences of warfare have done to them, the answer appears to be "not well." If the experiences of Rivers among the headhunters are instructive, particularly not well.

In the midst of the First World War, Billy Prior desperately wants to go back to the front. A victim of what is then termed shell shock, he has been hospitalized in England. Rivers, the psychiatrist that has taken care of him and many other men, sees the effects of war every day, but does not understand why anyone would want to return to the front. Billy does make it back, along with the poet Wilfred Owen.

From afar, Rivers tries to heal the men in his care, knowing they'll be sent back to be killed. While suffering from a battle with Spanish influenza, he gets stuck in his memories of doing anthropological research with a headhunting tribe, and his witness of their disintegration when headhunting is forbidden.

The Ghost Road feels distant from its characters sometimes, but from that remove weaves beautifully the attractions and horrors of war, the material world surrounding these soldiers, the hospitals that take care of the dead and dying, and who know their success stories will be sacrificed anew. We see men who are irrevocably changed by war. Their culture is now death, and death is about to be taken away.

Sex is another battlefield in this book - getting it, having it, exerting power through sexuality. Billy has to plan out an extensive campaign in order to be able to be alone with his fiancee, and, as in most combat, the plan doesn't survive first contact with the enemy. Billy also attracts and is attracted to men and women he encounters, and maneuvers sexual interactions skillfully, and mostly from a position of power, power that he has not always held.

This book deals with what parts of their lives the soldiers can control, which are controlled for them, and how they deal with it. And the looming threat of peace, which the soldiers both desire and fear.

The writing in The Ghost Road is evocative, and the details of the seamier sides of a soldiers life mesmerizing. The focus is squarely on the human elements of war, and Barker does a striking job of examining the moment before the end.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

The last portion of this book throws the first into stark relief. While I enjoyed the first section, it didn't grab me - it was a calm meandering from hunting meet to hunting meet, from a quiet life to brief flurries of activity on a horse. Nothing really happened, nothing changed.

And then, of course, everything did. Life remained prone to brief flurries of activity, but now they were flurries of activity that could kill you in a second. There were downtimes, but they were downtimes of trench foot and anxiety, not leisurely rides and hoping you make a good showing at cricket.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is the first in a series of three fictional autobiographies by Siegried Sassoon, loosely detailing his experiences as a young man, and then later, his enlistment and deployment to the trenches of the First World War. It was written years after the war, and has that sense of looking back on his younger self (here called George Stetson) with both compassion, love, and a bit of irritation.

George/Siegfried knows now that he was more careless of those around him than he should have been, from his aunt (mother), to the housekeeper who attended to his every need, to the groom who was as much as a father as he ever had, to the farmers over whose fields he rode with no care for destruction left behind. He remembers seeing those less fortunate as irritating impediments to the life he wanted.

It is the latter sections that make this first bit so poignant. Sassoon captures in such detail both the joys and casual cruelties of the life he lived before the war, his lack of direction, his selfish indulgence. But not with regret. These were the halcyon days, even though he later seems to realize that they were not without cost for those around him. In the world he chose to spend his energy, he made good friends and knew who he was and where he belonged.

And who he was opened doors when he enlisted, getting him positions and officer training those who didn't have the sporting connections found more difficult. He is very clear that many of the officers who were not gentry were better officers, but that doors were opened to him because he knew what to wear and how to ride.

The war is not presented in melodramatic terms. It is straightforward, bare, and all the more powerful for that. George loses friends, loses men, but no pity is asked for. He speaks in barest sketches of how he came to question the justness of the war in which so many were being sacrificed.

This book tells the tale of a how a man came to be, and how that was changed by the war. George wasn't a bad person, just thoughtless and carefree. By the end of the book, he is not.

The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell

Warning: some of the characters in this book are immensely irritating! This doesn't make it a bad book, but it did make me want to strangle Walter at regular intervals. And he's fictional. That's an accomplishment.

The Singapore Grip takes place in Singapore during the Second World War, in the weeks leading up to the Japanese attack. It focuses on the industrialists who have made their fortune there, and and many, many people who try to cling to what they consider normalcy, even in the face of imminent attack.

Walter Blackett is behind the immensely profitable rubber company Blackett & Webb. They are coming up to an anniversary of the company, and Walter is obsessed with the anniversary celebrations, and how it will show that Blackett & Webb have done nothing but good in Singapore, are unreservedly forces for good in the area and the world. Walter's belief in the goodness of capitalism, and himself in particular is set against labour unrest, and many demonstrable ways in which he and his family and others like him have enriched themselves at the cost of others, that most of what they have been good for is amassing wealth and not for, say, treating their workers well, or making sure anyone in Singapore gets a fair deal.

They've made money, and Walter doesn't see himself as a bad guy, so he figures that it is business that makes the world go round, and without him doing what he does, everyone would be much worse off. Matthew, the son of Blackett's deceased partner, Webb, does not see the world that way. Matthew is too much of an idealist, but he perceptively takes apart Walter's claims to any kind of moral high ground. Matthew, on the other hand, has ideas for where the world can go that ignore human frailty and self-interest in favour of believing that everyone would take care of each other if we only let them. Laudable, but not in any way practical.

And as the war edges closer, Matthew becomes immersed in immediate, as Japanese bombs start to fall, and his house becomes the centre for a fire brigade, and he spends his days trying to put out fires in Singapore, scorched and blackened. In the meantime, Walter continues to worry about his anniversary celebrations, and the immense amount of rubber he had waiting in his warehouses.

The Singapore Grip is an intriguing look at inertia in the face of imminent disaster, and the ways in which people cling to the normal in extreme circumstances, even at great cost, and without much heed for those around them. It is also an indictment of self-obsession of the wealthy, and their belief that what is good for them must be good for others. And it is about a city where war edges ever closer, and the question becomes whether or not they will survive the bombing or the occupation.

I can't say this is the most gripping book I ever read, but the characters are very interesting, even when I wanted to strangle them.

A Storm In Flanders by Winston Groom

This is a very awkward review to write. I've spent the better part of the last ten years turning myself into a historian, see, and so I feel like I should be speaking as an expert, analyzing this book of popular history, pointing out what's right and wrong, speaking from my so-called vast knowledge on the value of a book about Ypres written by the author of Forrest Gump.

The thing is, I don't know a damned thing about military history. I mean, I know the basics of the War of 1812 and Canada's participation in the World Wars, but man, that is it.

So really, I have no idea how accurate this is, or what more seasoned military historians would say. I have no gauge. (Well, his one pronouncement on the area I do know cold is utterly wrong, but then again, it's something the vast majority of people get utterly wrong, including historians.)

And my opinion as something very close to a layperson? It's all right. I didn't love it, but it was accessible, easy to read, and he incorporated some soldier narratives in interesting ways. This isn't a riveting book, as far as I'm concerned. (But then, I'm biased - there's a reason I generally stay away from military history.)

The descriptions of trench warfare, however, are vivid and stark, and he does a good job of capturing the long days and weeks and months with very little progress made. While Groom covers the decisions being made by the generals and politicians, he frames them in terms of the impact on the men who had to carry them out.

So, should I recommend this book to others? I'm not sure. But if you're interested in military history, it might be worth a read. Then again, military historians might come along and remind me I'm talking out my ass. And I am.

Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

Hmm, three or four stars? This was good, but I don't think I'll read it again. On the other hand, that particular feeling does not say that this was a mediocre book. But that personal gut reaction is what I tend to use for star ratings - four stars means I would like to or wouldn't mind reading it again. Five stars are books I feel the need to own.

So this is a three star review, but it is probably a better book than that.

J.G. Ballard looks back at his experiences during World War II through a novel. Fictionalized, he manages to tell the story of Jim, a British ten-year-old who is present in Shanghai with his parents when Pearl Harbour occurs and war is declared between the Americans and the Japanese. (British? His parents would certainly consider themselves so, but Jim has never been to England, and muses at times about joining the Japanese air force - not out of any patriotic leanings, but because they have the power and the airplanes he longs to fly.)

Separated from his parents in the first days of this part of the war, Jim wanders around Shanghai, and eventually ends up in an internment camp for the duration. His parents are absent for the vast majority of the story

Ballard has a knack for expressing Jim's feelings about the war in ways that are simultaneously childlike and devastating. The book covers Jim's life from 10 to 14, and he grows accustomed to the war, to expect it as the normal sequence of events, and tries to figure out life as though it will always be that way.

The adults around him are startled and sometimes perturbed by Jim's adaptation to a life in wartime, to life in a camp, to life as a prisoner. They try to exploit him, teach him, or ignore him. Jim, in turn, doesn't understand why the grownups around him haven't adapted to the war the way he has, why they don't, on some level, enjoy it.

As the Japanese get closer and closer to defeat in the Pacific, life at the camp becomes more tenuous and dangerous. Jim is forced on a death march, food supplies are cut off, bandits roam the countryside, groups of prisoners are looking to loot whatever they can. The relative order of the camp fades into even more chaos, and Jim is no longer certain that he is even alive.

The portion of the book that takes place when relative order has been restored is fairly brief, and we never find out if Jim manages to truly believe that he isn't dead, or that war isn't the normal condition of life. It makes me wonder how Ballard himself coped. How he managed to negotiate a world that he knew to be fundamentally fragile.