Heart-rendering.. when words make you cry or laugh, it is the sign of pure genius.

This is the first time I've ever given a book one star...I actually feel sort of bad doing it. Despite it being well-written, it's pacing was terrible, and I really had to fight to get through it. And then the ending -- oh the ending. After trudging through nearly 600 pages, the ending was about the most unsatisying I have ever read. I literally threw the book against the wall when I was done. And some idiot decided to make a movie out of it, with Nic Cage as Corelli? I can only imagine how awful it must have been.

"Corelli's Mandolin" is, like "The English Patient", a literate historical romance. It also manages to be a highbrow page-turner, with equal doses of wit and pathos to go with the romance.

4.5
Samo zbog kraja, inače je knjiga savršena.

My memory is hazy... But I did recall not being especially entranced. Like, stunned, because the reviews were so glowing and I read a soppy romance, with Romantic nuances which I did not connect to. Hmm... Oddly, similar to this latest Italian wonder everyone is raving over, and who moved me not at all. (Elena Ferrente). Maybe it has to do with genetics, and the response to the Latin overtures, to which I seem immune !?!

Lyrical. Took my breath away and broke my heart. Greece. War. Decency of soldiers. Indecency of war. Monsters. Humans. Where. Cats. Young girl's bed. Old woman's dream. Ending. And of course the Mandolin. Did I mention, Greece ? It is never too late. Love may get ole but if it is real then it's never forgotten nor forgiven. It can survive a war, it did and it survived them, in spite of each other. It survived the shuffle in the company of humans.

Quite simply one of the greatest books ever written. I could not love it more.

A story about life and love. A story about pain, loss and misery. A story about loving and being loved.

Na pola citanja sam odlucila da odem i kupim vise komada ove knjige da poklanjam ljudima iz ciste zelje da im ulepsam zivot, ali to nije moguce. Ama bas nigde je nema. I sad - sta reci, a ne zaplakati?

It was one of the very first things I tried to read in English, many years ago. Due to my poor language skills I couldn't appreciate the beauty of the words. I didn't manage to go through the first chapter and, being sure that Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a terribly dull novel, I didn't expect to come back to it.

Luckily I decided to give it another chance and I don't regret. I can almost feel the sun, warm sand, I can almost smell rosemary and cooked fish. The characters are lovable and funny in a light, natural way. There's also quite a big pinch of sadness and hopelessness mixed in the story. It's a good thing the ending is a bit unrealistic and tacky, because if it was any better, I would have to find a way to give the novel a 6-star rating :)

I didn't watch the movie, but I absolutely cannot imagine Nicholas Cage as Corelli. Wouldn't Roberto Benigni be just perfect here...? (despite not being Greek, of course)

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.

easily one of the best books i've ever read...
so good, i'm reading it again, even though i just did...
horrifying, yet beautiful in the extreme...
a brutally honest exploration into the notions of allegiance, loyalty, and the twisting emotional complexity of the forces that can either tie us together or force us apart...

in the face of betrayal and broken allegiances, corelli's mandolin, like corelli himself, is a force that continually works to pull and tie people together...

de bernieres has created a world i am seriously desperate to remain in...i want to go out and get the movie, i want to listen to the soundtrack of the film over and over, i want to re-read the entire book over again from the beginning, i want to go and buy a mandolin...
i want to book the next flight to greece and spend the next year searching for carlo's grave and drosoula's taverna...

i can't remember the last time a book has moved me so deeply...

it has also given me the term 'xenitia' which greeks use to describe the crippling homesickness they experience whenever they leave greece...
i suffer from a variation of this affliction in being separated for so long, almost 6 years, from my own homeland of san francisco...