How can I word a review that's anywhere near as exquisite as this book? I can't, so I won't try - I'll stumble along in my own clumsy style and try to hint at how magical an experience reading it was.
I started with a little wariness at the, shall we say, gentle pace. Can I really put up with this all the way through? I wondered. Not more than 2 or 3 pages in, I felt the first tug of its deep-flowing current. The very visual text moves at the pace of a human resting heartbeat. The "English patient" himself explains, about a third of the way in, how to approach the text, when instructing Hana on how to read Kim aloud: "Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. [...] Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen." Once I had this concept in my mind, I was really able to revel in the beauty of the fine-crafted text.


The characters' lives intertwine, create eddies and backwaters and draw the reader slowly deeper (I'm trying to continue with the water metaphor... and failing miserably.) The timeline and locations shift like the sands of the desert (mixed metaphors, anyone?) as the story gently, quietly, peacefully and somewhat sadly unfolds.
I'm strongly tempted to return to the beginning and start all over again, to luxuriate in the very human beauty of this story. It is simply a lovely, lovely book.