Strange... I heard mostly good things about this book, but it's quite boring so far. The author is apparently in love with his style, which is getting tedious. The longer the words, the better (he loves the word "malodorous" for some reason).

The images and characters are rather stereotypical: of course the Greek island is beautiful and sunny, the people picturesque and stupid in this special "ethnic", endearing way; when he's describing a group of inmates of the local lunatic asylum, of course one of them must be an exhibitionist; the village must have a freethinking doctor, a conservative and a communist... oh well.

All right, I've finished. Frankly, I'm disappointed. I assumed the book was funny, touching and a little crazy, and it turned out to be pompous, cliched and unoriginal and OMG BORING! I couldn't care for a single character (not even Psipsina the pine marten), I hated them all, I couldn't believe either in their motivations or in their feelings. They were completely cardboard, the lot of them: the villagers, the beautiful Pelagia, the good and wise doctor methodically pissing on her herbs, the good Italians, the goofy and good British, the ugly and hideous communists, the inhuman Germans, the crazy Orthodox priest, the naughty little child... oh and the good and noble homosexual for whom I had such high hopes.

What was the point of this book? The love story? It was shallow. The cruelty of history? It was exploited. The beauty of Greece? It was never shown. The characters were coming alive at one moment, and turning into puppets the next. Their complexities weren't even touched, as if the author backed off in fear and resolved to use them only in the most hamfisted ways. Mandras's mother Drosoula became Pelagia's unexpected ally, fine - then she cursed her long-lost son with a light heart and never mentioned him again? Mandras became a cruel, hardened, heartless communist bandit, fine - and then killed himself because he couldn't rape his fiancee? Carlo loved Francesco dearly and went almost mad at his death, fine - then he just told us he loved Corelli as well and shut his mouth forever, never showed his love, let the readers forget, then suddenly remember it in the crucial moment?

And the scatological, rank humor... oh... yeah a cat shat in Mussolini's hat, sorry helmet, oh very funny. Oh and the Cyrillic mentioned over and over again, olives eaten raw, a pea staying in an ear for decades... What a dishonest, torturous book. I'm sorry. I really wanted to like it...

I think I'm going to cry.
I really can't read another war anything soon.
This book is beautiful, the story while overly slow in parts, is beautiful. Then the history of the war comes in and you just feel cold and numb, how can people be so cruel?
And the years those two lovebirds could have had!! WHY?!

My wife's cousin, Luca Kouimelis, Hollywood script supervisor for the movie, "Corelli's Mandolin", kept asking me if I had read the novel, so I finally did and I agreed with her that de Bernieres had done a superb job with this novel. Since all three of us had spent many hours and days together in Greece in family settings, we enjoyed the history and the ambience of the 1940's in the Western part of Greece--the island, Kefalonia, especially since her father and my father-in-law, both Greeks, had fought the Italians and the Germans during WWII. They used to relate war stories to our families set in those times, so we had a keen appreciation of the novel. More than anything else, Corelli's Mandolin is a great love story--something we never tire of.

I was not prepared for this book!

A wonderful tapestry of sadness, brutality, joy, love, hate, pain and forgiveness.

Brilliantly written with characters that will stay with me forever! A perfect read to have finish on Greek Orthodox Good Friday!

2,5

Yazarın muzip dili sonradan okuru gafil avlıyor, hikaye gittikçe ağırlaşıyor o tatlı ruhunu kaybediyor, benimsemekte hiçbir sıkıntı yaşamadığımız bu tatlı atmosferin stabil kalmasını daha çok isterdim ancak en nihayetinde WWII dönem kitabı olduğu için değişimlerin nedenini anlıyorum bu yüzden kıyamıyorum puan kırmaya.

Doktor başta olmak üzere karakterlerin her biri çok başarılı aktarılmış. Kasaba desen sanki bir sonraki adımın seni oraya götürecekmiş gibi gerçekçi.
Deniz kıyısının ılık rüzgarları.
Gerisi savaş ve bize getirdiklerinden çok götürdükleriyle ilgili.

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?

DNF @56%

*sigh*

It is with a heavy literary heart that I write this pseudo-review. The truth is, I don't often abandon books. Even if I'm having a hard time getting through a novel, I'll push through in search of redemptive qualities. Indeed, I've read many a book that was a challenge to get through, but I found myself praising it by its end for reframing the journey. I've also read absolute turds that had me regretting the time I spent under the author's sway.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is not a terrible novel, but it is one I have no interest in continuing.

If I feel a sense of shame anytime that I give up a book, then my shame is doubled by the fact that this book was recommended to me by one of my favourite Goodreads friends, Kevin Ansbro. Kevin's review, which I took in again prior to my abandonment, highlights many parts of the book that excited me prior to my own reading. I offer it as an alternative to what follows.

I have an immense respect for the type of story de Bernières is telling with Captain Corelli's Mandolin. This WWII-era novel has an immense cast of characters who fall on both sides of the Italian-German invasion of the Greek island of Cephallonia. There are many characters and passages that I loved, but they were all too often bogged down by what became regular ventures to history class.

For many readers, I'm sure the detail into which de Bernières ventures will light the mind aflame. However, I couldn't help but breathe a heavy sigh and prepare myself to read what often felt like nonfiction with overly indulgent writing. Not all chapters do a deep-dive into this type of historical detail, and they shine all the more for it. The character-based moments are the ones that worked best for me, but they were too few and far-between for me to ever feel like I was getting my money's worth. I had every intention of finishing this novel off until I opened it up tonight to read a chapter that was one such historical outpouring. I set the book down and knew that I could push through, but I also knew that if I didn't love the book by now, it would be more of a chore than pleasure.

I have no doubt that this is a great novel, but it is not the type of book that I love to read. It reminded me too much of the parts I didn't enjoy in Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Both books share a sense of immense scope because they handle a wide cast of characters over an extended time period. But I wasn't captured by de Bernières' writing the way I was with Marquez. It might simply be that the style in which both these books are written are just not my type of read. For that reason, I'm going to shelve it in favour of some stuff that I've been dying to read all year long.

This is not exactly an admission of total defeat. Indeed, this is a book that requires a bit more of my time and mental effort than I am able to provide at this time. That does not mean that I won't find my way back to de Bernières' eventually, it is just that I am not currently able to enjoy it.

Kevin, old-chap, I apologize for literary cowardice, but am more than pleased to have made the attempt. Your recommendation was appreciated even though the novel didn't turn out to be my cup of tea. Don't let this turn you off future recommendations, I'd love to try again with another book!

Did we read the same book?

My goodness. The beginning of the book is epically long - reminiscent of when Frodo is trying to leave The Shire in The Lord of the Rings. The book is called Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and he doesn't make a meaningful appearance in the first 100 pages. I mean come on!

The middle part of the book is rather good. It deals with some complex emotions, and the love triangle has some unique depth.

Then, the ending. My goodness. Why were so many characters thrown in that we didn't care about? And possibly one of the most contrived plot devices of all time! Pelagia's father was adamant that she be allowed to practice as a doctor. But all of that just flies right out the window at the end. Also, Corelli claims that he thought that Pelagia was married, because she had a child. It could have been any of the orphaned children left behind in the war or she could have just been babysitting. When she sees him, he runs and hides behind a fence. Why? This makes no sense. She wasn't running toward him with a broom. She wanted to see him. Why wouldn't he just turn toward her and say, "Hey! Haven't seen you in so long! Tell me about your life!" and then give kisses on the cheek as is the Italian custom? Didn't he at least owe her a thank you for saving my life? The ending made no sense, and I wasted hours of my life on it.

Sorry, I don't have my regular computer so no flashy ending hyperlinks today. But for people who must know: I paid $31.67 for a hardcover first edition first print of this book on PangoBooks, and I also listened to this on Audible.

Let me just say that historical fiction is my favorite genre and Louis de Bernieres is my favorite author among historical fiction...so far. This was an excellent insight into the effects of war on a community, but focused on the soldiers. With a long-standing but complicated romance on the side it appeals to a wide audience. For me, the most memorable scene was the firing range when the shooters didn't want to shoot and one of those being fired upon falls, but is not shot, but lays among the dead and dying. This book gets into the heads of the characters and therefore the head of the reader. Excellent writing and based on a true story.

When I was living in Cuba, books in English were a precious commodity amongst the expat community. You read them, you passed them on - when you went home, you left them behind for those who would come after you. An American artist - one of many that passed through our lives - left me her doggy, much-read copy of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, exhorting me to read it; it was `incredible, unbelievable, the greatest book she'd ever read'. I had three attempts at it but never made it past page 30. It found it much too wordy, overblown, overwritten, annoying.

Two years later and I saw it again, the same edition with the blue and cream cover, half-price in WH Smiths at Manchester Piccadilly station. I was off to a friend's for the weekend and bought it to read on the train. I got about forty pages in before I abandoned it again. I left that copy with my friend, who's never managed to get through it either.

A few more years passed and I saw it in a jumble sale, the spine unbroken, apparently unread. It sat on my shelf until a couple of weeks ago when I heard Louis de Bernieres on Midweek, with Libby Purvis and my thoughts strayed to my still un-read copy. This time I was determined, whatever it took, to see it through to the bitter end.

I still struggled through the first chapters; they are overwritten; tediously wordy - never use one word where you can cram in a paragraph of adverbs.

Everything changes on page 57. Carlo is the best of this novel. From the moment he enters the story with his heartbreaking, impossible love for Francesco, it's like calming, fragrant oils have been poured on the story's choppy waters; the style settles and a plot suddenly emerges.

Corelli is a magnificent creation; the Italians in general lift the thing and send it spinning like a master pizza maker with his dough. For the entire central section of the book, I was enthralled (though I have to add, I thought Mandras was a cruelly mistreated character, Pelagia was a cow where he was concerned. My heart truly bled for him and his fate).

You could have cut the entire last third; Once Corelli leaves and the Germans take over, it's a picture left out in the rain; all the colour and life drained away and - I know it's describing a dire time of cruelty and hardship but that's not why it falls down here, I honestly think the author lost interest once his beloved Italians were out of the picture. The rest is just a downwards roll to the finale. It could all have been broken down to a chapter or two and the book would have been greatly enhanced by that because it seems to me that LdB had pretty much lost the will to live by then.

And then we reach the ending which was pants. Such a disappointment; improbable, out of character in my opinion. A huge anticlimax.

To summarise, it's a book of three parts; the beginning is annoyingly wordy, the ending disappointing and dull. Well worth the trouble of reading for the middle, which is joyous, beautiful, wonderful.

In short, nowhere near as bad as I'd feared, but nowhere near as good as it had the potential to be.

Paskaičius knygos aprašymą, galvojau, kad bus nuostabi knyga, juk ir Graikijos grožis ir meilė bei sunkesnės karo ir neleistinos meilės temos, atrodo viskas ko reikia puikiai istorijai... Bet man tai buvo 600 puslapių nuobodybės ir nors kartais jau atrodo keli puslapiai įtraukia, bet tada keliasdešimt visiškai neidomūs.