Favourite author micro review

 

The Wine-Dark Sea by Victoria Hislop (Headline)

There are some authors whose books you just know you're going to read regardless and Hislop has been one of these for me since The Island came out around 20 years ago and I always get very excited when I see a new one is due.

This one is set just post World War Two when Greece was tearing itself apart in a 'civil' war between left and right and concentrates on the effects this had on one family from the rural north of the country.

Many, many years ago my dad recommended the book Eleni by Nicholas Gage and so I was aware of some of the story covered here but by no means all of it. Eleni is a horrifying read because it is true and can't have a happy ending, but I found The Wine-Dark Sea to be just as dark and as novel did need the slightly (!) contrived coincidences and endings just to be rounded. It is a story of hope, survival, and family which swept me away.

I am lucky in that I get to go to Greece often and while I know about the Greece from antiquity, and the Greece from WW2,  am not so familiar with Greece from 1945-1990 and just how successfully the country has overcome its past divisions. I hope that it is a true story of reconciliation and that the trauma hasn't just been buried to explode again in the future.

Many thanks to Headline/NetGalley for early access to this book

World Book Night 2021: Book Four

 

Faking Friends by Jane Fallon (Penguin)

Borrowed from the library eBook catologue

The colder weather and lockdown rules are helping me to power through my personal World Book Night challenge and my 4th read was a more traditional novel.

This was a read that would definitely sit quite happily under the chick-lit banner but this is to do it a little bit of a disservice. While the characters are just fit into the end of Gen X age wise much of the plot revolves around problems experienced by Millennials which could mean a wide appeal or a book that falls through the cracks.

For me the plot was fun and definitely a new take on the revenge comedy and for once a book where the peripheral cast was as well written as the main protagonists. That's not to say I liked them all, even the ones I was supposed to, but I did believe in them completely.

The book felt a little overlong, the start was fast paced and a real page turner and then the final third returned to this style so I am glad that I didn't abandon the book. The middle however felt a little too slow and explain-y (for want of a better word), it gave lots of back story but for me I found it dull and not really necessary to the main story.

Unless I am reading for review purposes this is the sort of book I usually treat myself to when I am on holiday and I think that if I'd been on a sun lounger somewhere warm I might feel more warmly towards this one but in the depths of a miserable winter it didn't quite give me the escapism I wanted.

First Love

Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman

This was recommended to me by a friend who has very similar tastes to me when it comes to fiction. I read it first last year and then when I saw it on the shelf in the library I knew I had to read it again.

It is a love story set during a few crazy weeks in the Italian summer. It doesn't matter that this is an unconventional love story, between a teenager and a slightly older man, nor that the teenager is also male. It is simply a book about the madness and obsession that is first love.

The writing is so good that as you read the book you feel you are in a hot Italian summer. I read it on a typical English August day (cold and wet!) but I was transported to Italy, I could feel the Mediterranean heat soak into me as I was reading, I could have been sitting on a beach or beside a pool and not on a crowded train.

A little like most first love the passionate affair does come to an end, but in a realistic way that is hopeful and not depressing. The pair always know that there is an end date to their summer and that things will change when Oliver returns to his American life.

This isn't really what could be called a gentle book, at times it is pretty explicit, but to me it felt just right - a true romantic novel.

Aciman has written another novel and I will probably read it soon, but this book was just so perfect that I wonder if another book will be as good.