All is well that ends well.

In my mind, this novel did not end well.

There were definitely segments of this novel which warranted 5 stars: Carlos's letters and history, the pamphlet on Mussolini, his short but astute observation on the flaws of symmetry ( which I was especially interested in, being an ardent lover of balance), and La Scala's rehearsals (how I laughed out loud!).

In addition, de Bernieres had that ability to make me hate characters, that is a literary gift.

His descriptions of the warfront were perfect.

There were two areas where this author failed me as a reader.

First, it seemed de Bernieres was caught in Peter Jackson's dilemma as he came to the conclusion of the epic LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy: Return of the King.

How to end it?

Louis could have ended it tragically 70 pages from where he did, and I would have accepted this finale to this novel, so replete with heartbreaks and horrors. To attempt a semi-happy ending, after building and building in new characters for the sake of getting there was less than satisfying, though I am forever an admitted hopeless romantic.

Secondly, there were elements of fiction which became more like fantasy, and I was too often transported between believing the characters and their experiences ( and many were all too real) and then a few pages later thinking, "Now why did he write that?"

This book was definitely written with genius, but there were times I felt the author wanting to please the reader, rather than taking the storyline where it was meant to go.

Corelli's words on symmetry:

"Symmetry is only a property of dead things. Did you ever see a tree or a mountain that was symmetrical? It's fine for buildings, but if you ever see a symmetrical human face, you will have the impression that you ought to think it beautiful, but that in fact you find it cold. The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry...Look at your face in the mirror...and you will see that one eyebrow is a little higher than the other, that the set of the lid of your left eye is such that the eye is a fraction more open than the other. It is these things that make you both attractive and beautiful, whereas...otherwise you would be a statue. Symmetry is for God, not for us."

TRUE! Symmetry is for God! That is why when I come across a human face that has symmetry, I know it is one that our Maker spent a little more time on, and thus I am intrigued. Perhaps, it's a form of envy. I am anything but symmetrical, given my scoliosis-ridden spine, my right eye that slants uncontrollably downward in the corner, my teeth that will never line up like a nice white picket fence (no matter how many times they're braced), and my brows, which need constant herding into semi-orderly arches...and don't even get me started on my fingers.

Any man I have every loved has been statuesque. My dream home would be carefully balanced, like the Parthenon. Even the keyboard of pianos, beautifully laid out with 88 keys satisfy my love of symmetry.

Corelli you were right. Symmetry is for God, and thank goodness His perfection occasionally manifests itself in our imperfect world.

Set on the Greek island of Cephallonia during WW2 and its aftermath. German forces and their erstwhile Italian allies’ occupation (including one Captain Corelli and his mandolin). The Cephallonians had a pretty raw deal of it. Contrasting nationalities – Italian, German, Greek, British - through the eyes of the natives. How people act in horribly adverse conditions, which bring out the best and the worst. The story centres around Pelagia and her doctor father, Iannis.

The book rambles along, taking me with it to some scenes that I’d rather not witness. But the backdrop of the story is historically based and I must read more to find out how much so.

Excellent characterisation and a book that will stay with me for a very long time.

A really great novel ... but gee, I hated that last chapter. It seemed to ruin the whole novel for me!

Bu kitab sayəsində Yunanıstan barədə bir xeyli məlumat topladım. Müharibə faktoru kitabın ən önəmli müsbət cəhəti idi. Roman boyu Kefaloniya adlı kiçik adanın əhalisinin müharibədən nə qədər təsirləndiyinin şahidi oluruq. Bu adanı çox sevdim. Bir-birinə təzad insanlarını da. Bu gözəl, kiçik yunan adasının başına gələnlərə mən də kədərləndim. Çünki roman ağır hadisələr və insan dramları ilə dolu idi. Fikrimcə İannis həkim çox parlaq personaj kimi alınıb. Həm də romanda maraqlı yan personajlar vardı. Ümumiyyətlə, məncə, bu hekayənin ən gözəl tərəfi odur ki, onun ağırlığını hiss edib, baş qəhrəmanın ötürdüyü zamanın nə qədər kədərli olduğunun şahidi olasan. Hiss edirsən ki, həyat onun içindən keçib, onun üçün nə qədər əzablı bir boşluq, yarımçıqlıq qoyub... Pelagiyanın dediyi bir ifadə onu hərtərəfli izah edirdi: “Mən yarımçıq bir şeir kimiyəm”...

Mənfi cəhətlərinə gəldikdə, bəzən uzunçuluğa rast gəlirdim, bəzən mənə görə artıq detallar vardı amma ümumi abu-hava yaxşı idi. Sevgi hekayəsinin məni sıxacağını düşünürdüm başlayanda, amma düzünü desəm bütün bunların arasında sevgi xətti heç məni narahat etmədi də. Amma Korellinin sondakı hərəkətinə əməlli əsəbləşdim...Nəysə, spoylersiz.

I went into this one with low expectations... and probably remain sitting on the fence. Some people love it, others seem to detest it. For me - neither.
(Bit spoilery from here on, but it is based on History, so hopefully most people know a bit about this).
For the first part of the story, set realistically in Cephalonia, the largest of the Ionian Islands off Greece in 1941, tells of the Italian and German occupation. It is a relatively peaceful time - the Italians are peaceful and respectful of the Greeks, who are reluctantly led to like some of the soldiers. The main Italian characters are likeable and quite well padded out.
After Italy surrenders to the Allies, the Germans take over and start enforcing a more strict and violent control. The Italians resist the German reinforcements, and are slaughtered by the more powerful Germans with more powerful weaponry.
And finally the Americans arrive to mop up the Germans and bring freedom to Cephalonia, only for the Greeks to commence a civil war in which the Partisans followed the example of the Germans with violence and punishments of the already downtrodden people.

At this point in the novel, all of the characters had been well formed and their stories woven with the facts. But it is here that the novel speeds up - the core character family goes through some changes, a generation is added, then another. It is here that many of the readers become dissatisfied with the story, and I can appreciate why - it really does make a change.

At the end there are loose ends tied up, and while it is not a happily ever after ending, and potentially can be seen as a story of wasted opportunities, at least it wasn't a saccharine Hollywood ending.

There were some very well written parts - particularly the tormented war scenes. Some of the events were really sad, and the author didn't dumb down the gutless violence of slaughter and cruelty. I probably enjoyed this book more than I initially expected.

I haven't seen the film - and probably won't go looking for it. I am not a huge Nic Cage fan, and I can't really see Penelope Cruz in the character I built in my mind.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

Whew, and that is the last of my catchup reviews from my holiday... return to normal service now, and due to 'working from home' and high immersion with my family, that has turned out to be less-reading-than-normal, rather than the more-reading-than-normal that I anticipated!

The ancient Greeks treated tragedy and comedy as separate genres. But this Greek drama is a hybrid. Tragedy on the large and small canvas; comedy from individual characters. Such contrasts can strengthen one's reaction to both extremes, but for me, this particular book might have worked better if de Bernières had focused primarily on one or the other.

I see its charm. This is a feelgood book, filled with bucolic delights, entertaining Characters (borderline caricatures and slapstick), and saccharine sun. But they are contrasted with war, loss, and the pragmatics of making do. Humour, love, and music soften the graphically portrayed toll of war and tectonics.

Some of the writing is beautiful, and some of it is funny. I was captivated by the opening paragraph and loved the first chapter. But I was bored by the second chapter, and nervous when I started the third. The final, near contemporary, chapters were simultaneously predictable and implausible. It’s as if de Bernières wanted a happy(ish) ending, but not a happy middle, and went to ludicrous lengths to achieve it.

That patchy experience, with many different voices, styles, and genres, was repeated throughout: a bitty book, hence a bitty review. Like a visitor to the island, I ambled from beautiful beaches to rocky outcrops, along smooth pavements and disintegrating paths, from mountains to fields, from tourist towns to ancient villages, ever unsure of what I would encounter next. Maybe the rose-tinted hues of sangria would have helped.

I think this is probably an objective 4*, but my experience ranged from 2* to 4*, averaging 3*.

The Distorting Lenses of History and Ideology

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then again as tragedy.”

More… (no plot spoilers).
Cephallonia was settled so long ago that a veil blurs the boundary between myth and history. It is sometimes claimed as the home of Odysseus, and today, the enormous ancient olive trees have an air of “patient omniscience”.

The backdrop is a detailed history of the Italian and then German occupation in WW2, including international geopolitics and detailed battle tactics. Not my thing. Fortunately, de Bernières tells the story from local perspectives, as well as that of global victors.

Italian soldier, Carlo Guercio, believes history should be “the anecdotes of the little people” (he himself is physically huge). Dr Iannis is little in the grand scheme of things, but a figure of towering importance in his village. He spends many years writing a detailed history of the island, but is frustrated that his own passion makes objectivity impossible, creating “not so much a history as a lament. Or a tirade.” And then history “happens before my very eyes”. Later, his daughter, Pelagia, continues his work, putting her own spin on things.

Many characters are deeply conscious of their roots. But the atrocities of war, driven by persuasive demagogues touting totalitarian ideologies (communist and fascist) transform minds, hearts, loyalties, and lives forever.

People are separated from their heritage, their future, their families, and even their sanity. If you believe strongly enough in your cause, “Death is not an enemy, but a brother”, whether to embrace for its own sake, or to save others.

In the final chapters, capitalism, tourism, and hedonism herald further transformation for those on the island.


Love of All Kinds at its Heart

“Love delayed is lust augmented.”
“Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away… But sometimes the petals fall away and the roots have not entwined.”

More… (no plot spoilers).
Love is at the heart of this story. It has a big heart, and central to it all is the widowed Doctor Iannis and his daughter Pelagia (seventeen at the start). I loved them both, and their “gentle idyll with its mock contretemps, its tranquil routines, and its congenial eccentricities”.

There is young love, old love, a love triangle, parent-child love, love for a stranger’s child, unrequited taboo love, love across other boundaries (“a dark secret that everybody knew”), love for animals (Psipsina, the pine marten, and Pelagia’s goat – shades of Gerald Durrell), love of country, and love of music (opera in the latrine, and the eponymous mandolin).

Antonio Corelli is musician more than soldier. He plays his mandolin with “nightingales in his fingers” and “a symphony of expressions was passing over his face”. Pelagia realises music is “an emotion and intellectual Odyssey”. There is a whole chapter where he muses on his instrument being a metaphor for the woman he loves.

The hopeful message is that however hard life is, love for someone, or something, makes it bearable - as long as that love is not for excessive food or drink, or for a dangerous ideology.


L’Omosessuale

“I am mentioned almost nowhere, but where I find myself, I find myself condemned.”

More… (no plot spoilers).
Several early chapters explore the inner agony of a man’s secret love for a straight man. These are powerful, painful passages.

Later, it felt like more of an occasional, external, but nevertheless crucial plot point. It was just one of the ways the unpredictable variability of style, tone, and content unbalanced me.

•t“I am a foreigner within my own nation, an alien in my own race. I am as detested as cancer.”
•t“To me the company of a woman is painful because it reminds me of what I am not.”
•t“A guilty man wishes only to be understood, because to be understood is to appear to be forgiven… No one knows that I am guilty [gay], and nonetheless I wish to be understood.”


The Changing Role of Women

The story stretches from 1941 to 1993, a period of great social change on the island, especially for women.

More… (no plot spoilers).
At the start, the doctor has almost scandalously progressive ideas, so Pelagia is educated, independently minded, and won’t get a dowry. This, at a time when marriage is likely to be “childbirth and relentless work”, with “no freedom until widowhood… when the community would turn against her”.

Yet in middle age, Pelagia finds herself disapproving of how Antonia juggles career and motherhood. There is no answer to having it all.


Excusing Evil?

There’s a chapter titled “The Good Nazi”.

More… (no plot spoilers).
It’s easy to label people and events in binary terms, but simplification masks uncomfortable truths. A strength of this book is the conflict created in the reader’s mind by the compassion used when portraying those who commit unspeakable acts.

Günter Weber and others are seen, in part, as a victims of circumstance or gullibility, “maddened and broken by his own dutiful atrocities”, or finding redemption through sacrifice.

Perhaps this generosity reflects the islanders’ tradition of being “hospitable even to those who do not merit it”. They ridicule, prank, inconvenience, and try to exploit the Italian invaders (the Germans, not so much), wary of being thought collaborators, but mostly coming to mutual, somewhat uneasy acceptance.

They grudgingly feed the hand that bites them:
“This is Cephallonian meat pie… except that thanks to your people, it doesn’t have any meat in it.”


Sesquipedalian Vocabulary

How can anyone be “hyperbolically bisexual”?!

More… (no plot spoilers).
I love rich and unusual words, but at times, especially in the first quarter, de Bernières was over-generous with his profusion of obscure, and sometimes invented words, mostly via the delightful, multi-lingual doctor: stalagmitic, prestidigitation, effulgent, iatric mystique, eleusinian, iconostasis, stertoriously, corybantic, sternutatory, for example.


Satirising a Demagogue

A leaflet trashing Mussolini is anonymously written, printed, and distributed on the island. I read it in the final days of the US election of 2016, and finished my review the day Donald J Trump was declared President Elect - a man whose candidacy was first treated as comedy, but now feels more like tragedy:

More… (no plot spoilers).
•tHe “believes his own propaganda”.
•tSomething “is not true, even though everyone who knew Him in those days remembers it perfectly”.
•tHe “diverted funds… for His own election campaign”.
•t“He has pretended to be a Catholic.”
•tHe gerrymanders, appoints only sycophants, oppresses minorities, and approves of torture.
•t“He has assumed infallibility and encouraged the people to carry His image in marches, as though He were saint.”
•t“He agreed completely with the last person he spoke to.”
•t“Everything in his speeches is contradicted somewhere by another speech.”
•tBut “the speeches of a lunatic are treated as sacred texts”.


National(istic) Stereotypes

The first batch were mildly amusing and the style was reminiscent of Yes, Prime Minister, for example: Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
.
But as they kept coming, they lost their sheen.

More… (no plot spoilers).
The well-travelled and well-read doctor opines:

“Germany is taking everything, the Italians are playing the fool, the French have run away, the Belgians have been overrun whilst they were looking the other way, the Poles have been charging tanks with cavalry, the Americans have been playing baseball, the British have been drinking tea and adjusting their monocles, the Russians have been sitting on their hands except when voting unanimously to do whatever they are told.”

“Italians always act without thinking… A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be… and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish… well, God knows.”

An unnamed narrator observes 1953:

“Great Britain was less wealthy than it is now, but it was also less complacent, and considerably less useless. It had a sense of humanitarian responsibility and a myth of its own importance that was quixotically true and universally accepted merely because it believed in it… It had not yet acquired the schoolboy habit of for waiting months for permission from Washington before it clambered out of its post-imperial bed, put on its boots, made a sugary cup of tea, and ventured through the door.”

And near the end, a teenage boy compares girls:

“Italian girls were best, and English girls were useless unless inebriated. German girls were technicians, Spanish girls uncontrollable and melodramatic, and French girls were so vain you had to pretend to be in love with them from the start.”


Enchanting Isle - Quotes

“An island so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia and the red earth lies stupefied not only by the sun, but by the impossible weight of memory.”

More… (no plot spoilers).
Since ancient times, “the island had been a prodigy of wonders” with “a saint unique to itself, and it was as if his numinous power was too great and too effulgent to be contained within himself.”

The Acqui Division “surrendered to its charms, had sunk back into its cushions, closed its eyes and become enclosed in a gentle dream. We forgot to be soldiers.”

“Mountains… ringed to infinity by the churning masses of the sea.”


Other Quotes

“A gibbous moon slid filaments of eerie silver light through the slats of the shutters.”

More… (no plot spoilers).

•t“The extreme vestal chastity of this light.”

•t“Short of words even in his inner speech… a prodigy of slow endurance.” (Alekos, an old goat herd.)

•tAn “anthropomorphised promissory note.” (Father Arsenios.)

•t“The innumerable smiles of the waves”, by Aeschylus, “who obviously never went to sea in the winter”.

•t“It is impossible to escape those monsters that devour us from the inner depths.” The only solution is to wrestle with them, or ignore them.

•t“Symmetry is only a property of dead things” and buildings. “Symmetry is for God, not for us.”

•t“The Morse code of virgin light glancing after the perpetual motion of the waters.”

•t“Unravelling wool that had kinked and interwound upon itself in an attempt to resume the knotted configurations of its former state. Pelagia did not understand why wool should be nostalgic in this way.”

•t“They became lovers in the old-fashioned sense” (chaste, but planning for the future).

•t“His mouth working wordlessly like an improvident fish that a wave has tossed unsuspectingly on a spit of sand.”

•tTanks “perspiring with the inhuman smell of oil and heated steel.”

•t“A night that was made sepulchral by the attenuated and dancing shadows of trees and men that were cast out by the leaping orange pyres.”

•t“The ancient olive… made obeisance to the ground and split cleanly… before springing upright and shaking its branches like a palsied Nazarene.”

•t“I am my own ghost… I have been eaten up like bread… All my happiness was smoke.”

•t“A man who smelled of exactly the correct admixture of virility and aftershave.”

•t“The silent and deserted remains of the little houses that had all the appearance of regret and loneliness.”



Why I read this
In accordance with comment #25: here, I read this and Kevin read Galapagos.


Image source for tragedy/comedy masks:
http://aguera.com.br/wp-content/uploa...

De Bernieres style falls between Vonnegut and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and if that doesn't make your head spin and pants feel hot then I don't know what will. It's ridiculously European, in every good sense of the word. It's an epic romance for nihilists and atheists.

The only two horrors come from the realization that the book is now out of print, and that it was already filmed with Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz. Satan's hand is everywhere unseen...

Wow the end is completely different from this one in the movie.. sad in a way..

♥ ♥ ♥ Jedna z najkrajších kníh ktorá sa mi kedy dostala do rúk. Ide o nádherný romanticko-tragický príbeh dvoch mladých ľudí odohrávajúci sa na pozadí dejín samotného ostrova Kefalónia. Čitateľa na jednej strane rozosmeje len preto, aby ho hneď na ďalšej rozplakala. Kto chce vtipnú, krásnu, ironickú, zábavnú, ale zároveň aj vážnu a drsnú knihu je povinný prečítať si práve toto. Ďakujem za odporučenie a odporúčam ďalej. ♥ ♥ ♥

Readers are usually introduced to this writer through this novel because of the movie tie-in.

The narrative threads do come together rather skilfully, in a way which is bizarre, unexpected, and entertaining. Sad, and sentimental; humming with charm.

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!

This was a very unique story both in style and language. There was a quirky type of wordiness and humor that was slowly seductive if the reader could be receptive and willing to go for the ride.
The story begins in 1940 in Ceppalonia Greece, a small island described by Dr. Iannis as being full of magic and light. The first few chapters are written in the first person and are a kind of preamble to the plot. The viewpoints are Italian and Greek and are written from the point of view of an Italian closeted homosexual soldier, Benito Mussolini the Fascist dictator, Dr. Iannis the Greek doctor, and the Greek priest. The Italians are planning to invade Italy and attempt to make it look like the attack was provoked by the British.
Ultimately they are successful and the Italians occupy the island along with some German allies. The Captain in command, Antonio Correlli, is a musician at heart. He usurps the home of Dr. Iannis as his headquarters and gradually falls in love with Pelagia, the doctor's daughter and only child. Their love story forms the main plot but their are several subplots that engage the reader and blend together to form a type of crazy quilt, one that works even though, at first glance, seem not to quite match up. More than once I wondered where the author was going with this plotline....only to discover that I just needed to have faith. It all worked.
What is special is the language and the style. The words are poetic and descriptive and the style sings..clearly the author's intention. Although this is a love story there are brutally descriptive passages on war, cruelty and death that are among the most guesome I have ever read. Yet there is this underlying magic...
One of my favorite quotations is this advice the widowed Dr. Iannis gives to his daughter:

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then it subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because that is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day......Love itself is what's left over, when being in love has burned away"