Tag-Archive for ◊ Greece ◊

Author:
• Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Victoria Hislop was born in Bromley Kent in England in 1959 but grew up some miles away, in Tonbridge. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, then worked first in book publishing, followed by advertising and public relations. After becoming a mother in 1990, she became a free-lance journalist, writing for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday and High Life, before becoming an author. She currently lives in Sissinghurst, Kent, with her husband and two children.

Victoria Hislop has written two novels to date :
The Island published in April 2006 became a best seller in the UK, has won some awards and was translated into a dozen languages.
The Return published in April 2009

Victoria Hislop said that what inspires her most for writing her novels is visiting foreign cities and imagining her story in unfamiliar surroundings.

The Island is a four generation family saga set mainly in the seaside small fishing village of Plaka in Crete and Spinalonga, the small leper colony and tiny island facing it, going back to the nineteen thirties.

The novel begins in London with Alexis Fielding, a half English, half Greek, young lady who decides to travel to Greece and asks her mother, Sofia, if she can visit Plaka, her mother’s homeland, while visiting Greece.

Alexis would like to unveil a hidden family secret that she suspects that her mother has buried all these years from the family. After having her mother’s approval,combined with a letter her mother wrote to her old friend Fotini, Alexis goes on her “secret hunting expedition” in order to unearth the mysterious and devastating past of the Petrakis, her mother’s family, which Fotini unravels in a flash-back throughout the novel. Taking a few days which will seem like an eternity for Alexis.

The reader is taken back to the nineteen thirties, to learn about the suffering of the isolated lepers on Spinalonga, the small Greek island opposite Plaka. The story deals with grief, despair and deceit, but also, love, hope, loyalty, courage and redemption.

A well documented, engaging and richly imagined plot depicting the dignity and the delicate essence of human sufferings through prejudices and betrayals, despite the one dimensional description of the characters: the always good obedient Maria, the ambitious and persistently bad Anna, the ideal wife and teacher Eleni, not forgetting the bland Dr Kyritsis. None of the characters evolve during the whole tale.

An interesting story and a good read despite the rushed ending.

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Author:
• Friday, October 24th, 2008

Susie Vereker, daughter of an army officer, was born in the Lake District in northern England. She spent a great deal of her life travelling, first with her parents and later with her diplomat husband. She was in Germany, Thailand, Australia, Greece, Switzerland and France, and spent much of her life trying to adapt to the countries and their traditions.

She became a widow in 2001 after a long and happy marriage, has three sons, and now lives in a small Hampshire village in the south of England. Susie Vereker was nominated for the RNA Foster Grant Award 2006, for her novel Pond Lane and Paris.

Susie Vereker has written three books to date:
Pond Lane and Paris published in 2005.
An Old-Fashioned Arrangement published in 2006.
Paris Imperfect will be published in December 2008.

An Old-Fashioned Arrangement, like the Pilot’s wife by Anita Shreve, commences with a wife who receives the visit of her husband’s office colleagues, at home early one morning. They announce his death in a plane crash in the Indonesian jungle, while on a business trip. Bewildered and under the shock, Kim, the charismatic and life-like main character, tries to gather all her strength in order to sort things out for the sake of her 11-year old son, James. Like Kathryn did the best she could to protect her 16-year old daughter Mattie in The Pilot’s Wife.

But unlike The Pilot’s Wife, the atmosphere in the Old-Fashioned Arrangement is less gloomy, less cold and oppressive. The story takes place in beautiful, peaceful and wealthy Geneva, which contrasts with the state of destitution that English expatriate Kim finds herself thrown into after her husband’s sudden, unexpected death. She is penniless, she has been following her unreliable, egoistic husband, Richard, round the world without any pension or cover scheme, even the money in their bank account has been withdrawn by him.

She will now have to leave the comfortable house in the privileged Genevan suburb, Cologny, within a month, without knowing where to go. Her Swiss neighbour and landlord, Henri, who always silently fancied her, besides liking her son James, proposed “An Old- Fashioned Arrangement” to her. “The arrangement” was meant to help Kim solve her financial problems and lead a care free life without uprooting her young son.

Kim is in her forties and Henri is a refined old gentleman who loves women. For her to become his mistress is against her ethics. She goes through a dilemma before accepting the proposal, but finally, having no family, hardly any friends and no home base due to her nomadic life, Kim sees no other choice but to follow her female instinct and succumbs to the offer. She accepts the deal for the security of herself and her son and not out of love.

But she will end up loving and caring for her guardian angel, Henri, to the extent of refusing the advances of Mark, the handsome English diplomat she happened to meet after her relationship with Henri. But after Henri dies, Kim who now knows the taste of freedom, will take more care before accepting to marry Mark. She will want to know him better before tying her life to his. Age and experience have taught Kim to be wiser, rational and less emotional.

Kim didn’t love her husband, Richard. She was even thinking of a divorce and his death would have been a relief if it wasn’t for the lack of money to survive. All these years she depended on her husband and now she will learn,at last,what it feels like to be emancipated.

The characters in the novel are very realistic, humane and well portrayed, any woman in the world can identify with Kim’s big problem, which makes it difficult for readers not to feel involved, especially with the author’s endearing and humoristic style of writing.

Although lighthearted, this novel treats a serious issue and has several unexpected suspense elements, in combination with a few twists, which makes it difficult to put down.