“Lyric essays” tell stories in a much more fractured manner than traditional narratives; instead of one plot line, we have a series of pieces of narrative that add up to a coherent novel. As in his other books we have looked at Ondaatje in The English Patient drifts wildly from one story and character to another, in a variety of prose forms, although he never shifts into poetry. The prose here seems to much more concerned with exploring the inner lives of characters and how they relate to one another than following a line of action.
There really seems to be a sense of trying to capture particular places, people, and moments in history. Ondaatje uses real historical figures freely in this work, though it is fiction, and it does not seem to try to portray them as true to life as possible. He uses archaic environs, experiences, occupations, and relationships that work to force the reader out of the present and into this past as Ondaatje progresses through his disparate bits of prose. The book is a loving ode to this era the characters struggle through, but also, it seems, to art and writing that has struck the author himself, as he builds up a narrative around the liberal use of excerpts that infuse meaning into both these selections and the characters and story.
Ondaatje is not only unafraid to excerpt other works that apply to what is happening in the narrative, he also boldly excerpts himself. In other words, he shifts freely in between voices and forms of prose even within these pieces of narrative. Ondaatje sometimes uses a third-person omniscient voice. Sometimes he has less omniscience. Sometimes he will shift into the first-person view of one of his characters. Sometimes he uses extensive dialogue between the characters to allow them to reveal themselves. Sometimes he sets entirely quiet scenes in which internal thoughts and feelings are revealed. Each of these choices is a strategy for what kind of effect Ondaatje wants to have on the...