This month’s book group read. My first and probably last book by Victoria Hislop.
In the prologue, Themis, an old Greek woman, decides that the best present she can give to her grandchildren is her life story. It's not an ideal present to be honest. Up until the epilogue, we are treated to the story- in third person omniscient narration including lots of details that she couldn’t possibly have known, but which it appears in the epilogue that she did tell her grandchildren.
We learn a lot about the turbulent political history of Greece. And some of that detail is actually pretty interesting. However, it all seems pretty polarised and simplified- like trying to explain it all to children. There’s no nuance in any of the character’s political leanings.
The brother who supports the right wing is turned into an actual monster and given a permanent scar across his face. The brother who supports the communists can do no harm. When Themis joins the Communist army and goes out to fight for them, she seems to accept all the atrocities she witnesses (and takes part in) as just doing what needs to be done. There is barely any criticism of their actions no matter how nasty.
Of course, she falls in love with a fellow soldier and begins sleeping with him while she’s supposed to be on guard duty. Her guerilla platoon is ambushed soon after her lover is transferred away to another marauding mob. She finds herself detained in a series of prisons designed to break the spirits of the communists and make them revoke their beliefs.
At this point in the proceedings, things get eye-rollingly predictable. The next couple of big reveals were so clichéd and hackneyed I might have stopped reading if it wasn’t the book group book.
After her release from the prison islands, she spends the next several decades trying not to be noticed and bringing up her children, biological and adopted, with her new husband, sitting on the sidelines and watching the political situation swing in various directions.
There are big dramatic events going on in this book, but it all feels bland, with very little drama, even when she’s out fighting in guerilla units, or trapped on prison islands where the guards torture the prisoners.
The evil nazi brother is given the most gentle of redemption arcs to highlight the power of family… despite the fact that, for the first two thirds of the book, family was just somewhere where brothers and sisters had irreconcilable differences and just screamed at each other over the dining table. The dining table is a character in its own right, and possibly less wooden than some of the supporting cast.
She clearly knows a lot about Greece and its history. The latter half of the book does occasionally read like a history lesson about the swings in Greek politics. She deserves kudos for the level of research that has gone into writing this. It’s just a shame that it isn’t always woven as seamlessly into the story as it could be and feels like she’s just listing historic events.
It's not a complete failure of a book but isn’t far off. It’s readable. There are some interesting sequences and some nice humour in the early childhood sequences. Overall, it’s just bland. The literary equivalent of a big mac with the pickles and the sauce removed. It deals with political commentary with about the same level of subtlety as using a tank to break down a door.
I suppose you could argue that her blindness to her side’s faults is a form of commentary, but it doesn’t come across that way whilst reading the book. The lack of any nuance anywhere else seems to dispute that particular interpretation.
So overall, readable. Occasionally interesting (if a bit of a lecture). But all a bit bland.
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