****** "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Dr. Samuel Johnson *...
****** "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Dr. Samuel Johnson ******
Member since:04.07.2002
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The young English woman Alexis plans a trip to Greece with her fiancé which will also include Crete, she asks her mother whether she'd mind her paying a visit to the village where she's from.
Her mother Sofia is from Crete, but strangely and incomprehensibly, she's always been reticent about her past, an old photo of a Greek couple on her night table is the only reminder of her Greek past. To Alexis' surprise her mother doesn't evade her as usual but writes a letter to her childhood friend Fotini asking her to tell her daughter everything about her family. This is the frame of the novel, Alexis finds Fotini in the village of Plaka in the east of Crete, what the old woman tells is the novel proper.
I ordered the book because some years ago my husband and I spent a week on Crete and on a day out visited Agios Nikolaos, the town near Plaka, from where we could see the outline of the small island Spinalonga. I learnt from my guidebook that lepers were sent there up to the year 1957, we saw boat tours to the island advertised in the harbour but as it was the end of October, the tourist season
was already over and the boat tours had stopped. When I read that Victoria Hislop had written a novel set on Crete dealing (also) with the leper colony, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and get entertainment and information at the same time.
I've stated repeatedly that I don't like reading thick books, this is not just a quirk, the reason is that a certain amount of pages can only be filled with extensive padding. I like a novel to be character and plot driven and I want to use my imagination, there isn't much left to imagine if the author describes the landscape, flora and fauna, people, their feelings, the setting, houses from the outside and from the inside, clothes and customs in the greatest detail. With 473 pages the book would just have all this, I knew it and I feared it.
Including Alexis four generations are introduced, that means many years pass and many seasons come and go, the arrival of spring, for example, and the changes it brings to the Cretan landscape fills many pages if we add up the paragraphs scattered throughout the text. Surprisingly, I could bear it, I have to concede that such a writing style does help create an atmosphere.
The story is a family saga concentrating on the women, but it's not just a family living through difficult times, Crete suffered horribly under the German occupation during WW2, two of Alexis' relatives got leprosy and had to leave their families to live in the leper colony on Spinalonga.
Victoria Hislop has researched the subject leprosy meticulously, how she treats it has my admiration. The Island is her debut novel, did she want to prove to herself and the world at large that she was able to write one or did she want to write on leprosy but realised that not many readers would be interested in a treatise on the subject? I can only speculate, I think the latter was the case, she embedded the gruesome topic in a fascinating story to sugar the pill so-to-speak. Willy nilly we learn a lot about the treatment of the disease and follow with anxiety the physicians' work who think they may have found a remedy to cure it without ever getting the impression that we're listening to a lecture.
I've got the feeling that what Victoria Hislop tells us about the community of the lepers on Spinalonga springs mainly from her imagination and is not based on research, how they organise themselves and live their lives knowing that there's no way back, that they'll die on the island, is too good to be true, it sounds like a utopian concept to me, like the creation of a parallel - a better - society.
I've just learnt from a member of this site who's travelled repeatedly to the area where the novel is set that the inhabitants are not too keen on it, understandably, I'd say, their community and their reactions to the lepers' colony off the coast isn't painted only in bright colours. Maybe they'd accept a realistic depiction more from a fellow countryperson, preferably a Cretan author, than from an outsider.
Despite my dislike for elaborate description I'd like to give the novel five stars, I know that many readers cherish just this; with many original, round characters, all events that can make family life fascinating and/or abhorrent like births, weddings, marriages, betrayal, infidelity, disease, death, The Island has everything you expect from the genre.
The last page of the book confirms my conviction that it was the topic leprosy that made Victoria Hislop write the novel, she explains that "Although leprosy has been eradicated in Europe, it is still a major health problem in developing countries. In 2004 over 400,000 new cases were diagnosed, around 70 % of these in India . . . " How is that possible when we've just learnt that the disease can be cured effectively nowadays? The answer is: lack of money. The book ends with the information that it costs 21 GBP to help cure one person of leprosy and gives an address for further information.
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I think I would read the book too, but only in german. ;-)
patriciat 23.09.2008 08:51
It sounds fascinating reading but after reading another of your book reviews (Ellory) which I enjoyed and you hated, I'm not sure we have the same taste in books. Pat.t x
kirstymack80 14.09.2008 22:02
I really enjoyed this book too (and would also award it 5 stars!) and I read it while I was holidaying in Crete last year, making it even more special. KM
Aug 17th, 2008
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