I have had this book in my possession for probably 20 years. A friend had highly recommended it and I actually had it signed when Louis de Bernieres came to Calgary in 2002. I'm not sure why it took me so long to read it, but I finally did.
Was it worth the wait? I'd have to say yes and no. This book was like a roller coaster ride. It was a slow climb to build any momentum ( it took me ~85 pages to get into the book), and then I was in love with it, and then it plummeted downwards and eventually had me enthralled again , till the ending, where it left me happy but mad at the same time.
The story of Pelagia and Antonio and the supporting characters was the story that I loved. When the author went off on other tangents, it fell flat and left me uninterested. Luckily the last 100 pages or so drew me in again, or I could not reflect on it fondly.
The author is a very accomplished writer, but his use of obscure "big" words annoyed me. I did not feel any of them were necessary to the story.
A couple of memorable lines that I would like to share:

"...she realised suddenly that there was something about music that had never been revealed to her before: it was not merely the production of sweet sound; it was, to those who understood it, an emotional and intellectual odyssey. She watched his face, and forgot to attend any more to the music; she wanted to share the journey."

" When loved ones die, you have to live on their behalf. Seeing things as though with their eyes. Remember how they used to say things, and use those words oneself. Be thankful that you can do things that they cannot, and also feel the sadness of it."

Overall, an uneven book, but one that I still enjoyed because of the main players and my connection with them!

I first read this book in 1994, not long after my first daughter was born. It was that book that everyone seemed to be reading - and deservedly so, because it is as rich, detailed, panoramic and insightful as any of the great classics. I reread it this week because I was visiting Kefalonia (or Cephallonia) - the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece. Kefalonia in the summer of 2017 is an idyllic place: peaceful, clean, sparsely populated, and graced with the clearest, bluest water I've ever seen. It is hard to imagine the island as a crossroads for various invaders (Venetian and Turkish being the primary ones); it is even more difficult to imagine it as the scene of bloody atrocities during World War II as described in this book.

The book begins with the self-taught Dr Iannis performing a slightly ludicrous surgery - he is extracting an ancient pea from an old man's eardrum - and working on his history of the island. The new History of Cephallonia is proving to be a difficult project because Dr. Iannis cannot seem to write it without "the intrusion of his own feelings and prejudices." "This island betrays its own people in the mere act of existing," Dr. Iannis writes, at the historical moment when Greece is about to be invaded by Italy and dragged unwillingly into the war. There are many voices in this book - it is written from the viewpoint of multiple perspectives, including that of The Duce (Mussolini) - but the voice of Dr Iannis is the closest we get to a broader authorial perspective. Ironic, excoriating, tender in turn, the voice of the doctor sets the tone for the book. He diagnoses, not just the human body and its idiosyncrasies and failings, but also the human spirit.

Not long ago a friend and I were debating what makes a book an enduring classic . . . what sets it apart from being just a good story for its particular moment in time. We agreed that the great novels all seem to employ a kind of micro/macro strategy. The reader connects to a small set of characters, and their particular dramas are set against a broad sweep of history. The doctor, his beautiful daughter Pelagia and the Italian soldier who is billeted with them give the novel its intimate focus, but in another sense this is a war novel on a grand scale.

My daughter (19) also read this book while we were on holiday in Kefalonia, and much of the history it recounts was completely unknown to her. The war, all of the horror and absurdity of it and all of the senseless waste of lives, is still a subject of fresh outrage to her and she raged about the 'stupid pointlessness' of it all. But as with Catch-22 - another great novel about WWII - the narrative sets human stupidity, callousness and folly against acts of true kindness and nobility. At one point, Dr Iannis tries to explain to Captain Corelli that there are two Greeks inside of his daughter (and every Greek person) - not so different from the good and bad angel idea. But so much of what is specifically Greek in nature and culture to this book has a larger truth to it.

I am happy I give finally read this book. I have to agree with other reviews and say the second part was a bit anticlimactic and dare I say silly. After the war and assuming Pelagia was married and not checking is bizzare. Saying that I learnt a lot about Kefalonia and the Italian massacre, Greek civil war and 1953 earthquake.

The characters in the book are fantastic. Dr Iannis, Corelli, Pelagia, Mandras and his mother, the goat and pine marten all add to the colour. Finally, Carlo is my favorite with his ultimate sacrifice saving Corelli from the firing squad. I now will have to watch the film and see how Hollywood butchered it.

They meet, they fall in love, and then they don't see each other for thirty years until they are magically reunited and realize they were intended to spend their whole lives together but somehow misread the instructions on the box. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

The presence of--& intrepidly sudden breaks from--romantic conventions is what makes "Corelli's Mandolin" (alongside its romantic older brother, book two of his Latin American trilogy, the devastating love tale "Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord") one of the MOST ROMANTIC novels of ALL TIME. On par with "Gone With the Wind," & other epics like "Cold Mountain" & "The English Patient," it truly was, to this impressionable-though-selective reader, what is the equivalent of a wondrous trip to Adult Disneyland, where surprises loom ever-near, and whimsy runs amok.

But what makes this utterly brilliant is the prose (on top of an unpredictable and thrilling plot). The writer is this supernova de Bernieres (all 4 of his novels at this point are in my Must-Read List). Here, you realize exactly WHY you read. WHY people bother to write--if you are Louis De Bernieres you simply cannot not keep producing. The gift is almost mythical, and you are compelled to feel that the auteur has had the TIME of his LIFE writing this, writing and falling head-over-heels in love with his creation which, indeed, depicts LOVE and is, itself, wholly a product of love--the love of beautiful prose.

In "Corelli", the tricks and poetics already explored in the often-lauded Latin American trilogy, collaborate once more to make a solid work of art. As is customary, just as this tale takes one of its manifold dark turns, when times in the Greek island are dire, desperate and almost-hopeless, the titular character appears & drives the darkness away. This, as if a gift from the Greek gods themselves. Or the gift from a master to his drooling spectator.

This, his fourth (amazing!!!) concoction, puts in evidence the fact that not ALL magic realism belongs to sir Garcia Marquez. Louis de Bernieres' brand is all his own: humorous, unpredictably playful and savagely biting. The effect lasts outside of the book; the novel is a rotund success. My favorite of Louis de Bernieres (so far).

I devoured Corelli's Mandolin like some bon vivant living in the 20th century. Like a character in one of his novels, in fact. I became for a full two days, a blissful accomplice, just grateful to be nothing but a hoodwinked voyeur.

Poignant and humorous, Corelli’s Mandolin takes the reader on a journey through both the landscape of the gorgeous Greek island of Cephallonia and the troubled hearts and minds of its inhabitants. Pelagia we meet from the beginning-a doctor’s daughter, a fresh maiden, a a captivating beauty. She jumps at the chance to affiance herself to Mandras, a fisherman who sees his glory in the coming war.
Invasion is imminent and Italy finds excuses to wreak havoc in Greece. The forces land on both the mainland and the islands, including Cephallonia. Enter Antonio Corelli and his mandolin. He is billeted with Pelagia and her father, and romance ensues. But what of Mandras?
The civil war in Greece that takes place at the same time as WWII is not forgotten on these pages. A resistance group called ELAS hides in the mountains stealing from the villagers and shooting all those who stand in their way. They are communists. This upheaval continues into the 1950s, mostly against those who wish the royal family back in leadership. There is bombing, looting, raping, internment camps. The book continues to cover this story as well. I had thought it was just a war love story. I was ever so wrong.
This book is a love story, but it’s also about finding peace; solidarity and unity; support systems; defining unique inspiration; and kindness. I understand why it’s considered a classic.

Bezdirən, bir o qədər də sevdirən, fərqli xalqların II Dünya müharibəsini yaşama tarixçəsi kimi diqqətəlayiqdir.

I enjoyed this love story mingled epic war story saga. Curious as to the historical accuracy, I researched, just a scratch of the surface, to find some controversy. From an article in The Guardian, "For many of the older generation, who lived through the events described in de Bernières's book, his story is a slur on the record of the Greek resistance to the Nazis and a mish-mash of distortions and untruths about their island's wartime history."

Nonetheless, I will not retain the events as specific to the victims of war. To me, the story is fiction. If I seek historical facts and analysis, there are plenty other sources. For me, the value of Louis de Bernières' work is the beauty of its descriptions, philosophical observations, insight to human nature, horrible travesty of war, and fascinating emotional landscape.

My nit with the novel is the change of pace and quality of writing during the last 150 or so pages. Time accelerated and major events and drama began to skim over characters whom I'd grown to love. This resulted in a sort of flattening of the colors and personalities.

In summary, I recommend the read. True gems exist among the pages.

Would you think less of me if I said I loved this book? Will you defriend me and publicly mock me if I said it made me cry a little bit? Anyway as I stand over the shadow of my former self and see my fearsome blue monkey avatar in a crumpled heap like a soggy tear covered kleenex I stand by what I say. Seriously, I'm not an overly emotional person but I loved this. Maybe I loved it because really this story is not a story with a happy ending. This book symbolises the waste of time, the waste of life and love and a missed opportunity for happiness which can be created by one decision or chance event. Maybe that's all life is... a series of missed chances. Did you take your chance when you saw it coming?

Nella verosimile ricostruzione storica dell’occupazione Italo-tedesca di Cefalonia, tra i tanti temi toccati il romanzo sceglie come principale l’amore tra Pelagia e Antonio.
Per me rimane un romanzo di donne, che sopravvivono anche senza uomini o nonostante gli uomini: sono medici, contadine, ostesse, casalinghe, combattenti, imprenditrici, prostitute, monache, nonne madri figlie e nipoti. Sono sono femmine le capre, le gatte, le martore dei pini. Sono la terra stessa e la storia. Per questo ho trovato inutile l’epilogo romantico e un po’ scontato, ma rimane un gran bel libro.

4.5 stars really.

Thank goodness I was able to read this without imagining Penelope Cruz and Nicholas Cage as the characters (it helps that I never saw the movie). Penelope as a Greek beauty just doesn't work for me.

I really enjoyed this book...I loved that it was more than a love story between a man and a woman, but also between father and daughter, man/woman and country and between friends and honor.

I am a sucker for historical writing...I loved that de Bernieres addressed the emotionality that is inherent in writing a history. Can anyone ever really be emotionally removed from history? I don't think so. But, maybe that is just me.

I don't often reread books, but, first of all, I realised that it's been nearly twenty-five years since I originally read this (which is mildly terrifying), and second of all the chance to read it while I was on Cephalonia seemed too good to pass up. And it was a transcendent experience to be able to walk along the seafront of Argostoli (where I could imagine Pelagia's grandchildren had one of their souvenir shops) and past the little monument to the fallen soldiers of the Acqui division, where you could connect fiction to historical and geographical reality in a visceral way.

I loved this when I first read it as a teenager, though I didn't know much about the history behind the story. This time round, I was even more impressed by how brilliantly de Bernières combines interpersonal drama and historical exposition by means of that finger-snapping, multilingual prose style. It's all done with a massive dose of chutzpah, not just in de Bernières's willingness to appropriate the voice and feelings of people living in a very different country and time (for which, inevitably, he drew criticism from some quarters), but also in his willingness to ventriloquise so many specific historical figures, from Mussolini and the Greek dictator Metaxas to a host of minor (but real) ambassadors and military commanders, many of whom I was reading about recently in books of Greek history.

In fact it's the chutzpah that lets him get away with it: even at his most controversial, there is always a sense of heartfelt stylistic exercise to his writing, a conviction that his intent is as much playful as it is serious. I realise now, looking back, how much of an impression this left on me, and how much I measured other writers by this ability to enter into ‘foreign’ societies and mindsets, and to balance comic elements with moments of extreme tragedy.

Violence in de Bernières (at its most extreme, I think, in the nightmarish male-on-female mutilation of Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord) is often shocking but it never has the bleakness of, say, some of the passages in Cormac McCarthy, despite an outlook that can be equally pessimistic. (‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then again as tragedy,’ he writes here.) Somehow the blackness of his stated outlook is contradicted by the wit and fizz of his prose style. He seems motivated not by despair but by a steely sense of outrage – he shocks you with the air of trying to slap awake someone in a burning building. Behind everything is this tremendous sense of wise, well-travelled humanism (embodied in this novel by Dr Iannis, one of the great characters of modern fiction) which I find more inspiring than ever when I think about how little I've encountered it in other writers since.

Back in the day, the consensus on this was that it was let down by the ending, which I'm now going to talk about briefly, so feel free to stop if you haven't read it. After spending three hundred and fifty pages to describe the four years of Axis occupation, he spends the final fifty pages racing through four entire decades. The effect is, indeed, a little jarring, but it always worked really well for me as a way of squaring the circle a writer is faced with in a book like this. After a military occupation, a brutal civil war and a colossal natural disaster, it would have been not just saccharine but offensive to have our romantic leads come together in a happy ending. It was something I was very aware of when I read it the first time: how's he going to end this? To crush their dreams would seem unbearably cruel, but to fulfil them would seem a betrayal, or at least an undercutting, of the tragedy of the historical experiences the book has been trying to evoke. De Bernières's solution is to locate a happy ending of sorts, but to position it outside the actual parameters of the story. He says, in effect: you want a happy ending? Fine – but no cheating. You'll have to wait half a century to earn it.

Far from being out of place, it's this final flourish that reinforces the sense you get from the whole book, and from a lot of his writing, that he is determined to offer up as much hope and happiness as possible – but not to offer more than history justifies.