Tag Archives: victoria hislop

#BookReview ‘The Figurine’ by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop #Greece #historical

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It’s a rare occurrence for me to abandon a book, but I almost gave up on The Figurine by Victoria Hislop. I persevered through the glacial pacing of the first half and at 55% on my Kindle the story kickstarts. A story about archaeological mysteries is melded with dark truths about a family’s wartime history. Victoria HislopHelena McCloud is half-Greek and from the age of eight is sent every summer to Athens to spend time with her maternal grandparents in their wealthy apartment. Her mother Mary never accompanies her and doesn’t explain why. Helena sees much she doesn’t understand. When as an adult she returns to Athens, she becomes involved in uncovering a criminal gang exploiting precious Greek statues and treasures. Now her childhood recollections of those long-ago visits begin to make sense.
I struggled to connect with this story for a long time and by the end I wished it had been told in a different order and was a third shorter. Lacking a close personal perspective – admittedly, telling a story through the eyes of a child has to be one of the biggest challenges for an author – it was at times like reading at distance through binoculars.
The figurine of the title is the turning point in the story, bringing with her admiration, awe and suspicion. Helena, head over heels in love with fellow student Nick, is at first too enamoured to acknowledge what is going on around her. Gradually the story focusses on the theft of archaeological antiquities in Greece, predominantly at digs on isolated, little-populated islands, and run by criminal gangs in Athens. Helena assumes that her grandfather, a figure of imposing military force, benefitted in trade from stolen antiquities. Along with an intrepid brother and sister who are antique specialists, and a new group of Athenian friends, she digs deeper into her painful family past. This is when the story begins to buzz.
Not Hislop’s best, which for me remains The Island. The small figurine is the large heart of the story. ‘With her head tilted towards the heavens, the figurine seems proud. With her arms folded, she seems relaxed. With her diminutive ears, she seems to listen. With her pale eyes, she seems to be aware of the crowd.’

Read my reviews of other these books by Victoria Hislop:-
THE STORY
THE SUNRISE
THOSE WHO ARE LOVED

If you like this, try:-
‘My Brother Michael’ by Mary Stewart
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton
‘The Animals at Lockwood Manor’ by Jane Healey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE FIGURINE by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7xL via @SandraDanby 

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- frances brody

#BookReview ‘Those Who Are Loved’ by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop #Greece #historical

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Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop is the story of Themis Koralis from 1930 to 2016. Set in Greece it tells the troubled history of the country through the Second World War, occupation, Civil War and military dictatorship. They are harsh years; the country, its people and families are divided by beliefs, poverty and wealth. It is a long book, 496 pages, and a lot of history is covered. Victoria HislopThemis has two brothers – Panos and Thanasis – and a sister, Margarita; they live with their grandmother in the Athens district of Patissia. Their father is a merchant seaman and hardly comes home, their mother Eleftheria is in a psychiatric hospital; both appear briefly. Central to the home is Kyría Koralis. I enjoyed the descriptions of these early years in the apartment, the meals, the squabbling teenagers, Themis and her friendship with Fotini. But political beliefs are dividing the country and as the arguments grow in the Koralis apartment, they also divide the siblings. The divisions only get worse under German occupation, leading Panos and Themis to support the communists in the fight against the Nazis. Thanasis however becomes a policeman. Margarita, working in a dress shop, is secretly in love. Their political views, forged as teenagers, impact on the rest of their lives.
At times I struggled with this book, other sections I enjoyed. Perhaps this is because the linear narrative is driven by historical events which Hislop felt bound to include, and is not dynamic or character-driven. There are many peripheral characters who disappear without another mention and I found the middle section particularly slow, as if Themis is treading water before reaching the next phase of her life. The novel is effectively the life story of Themis, the history of Greece during her lifetime and its effect on her, and it includes a fascinating account of the post-WW2 communist rebellion in Greece, my knowledge of which was rather hazy. At times it is difficult reading and it is certainly thought-provoking; extreme views with two uncompromising sides unable to meet in the middle, quickly deteriorating to violence, cruelty and abhorrent behaviour.
Hislop is my go-to author for novels set in Greece. I finished Those Who Are Loved wishing she had chosen a specific phase of Themis’s life to concentrate on rather than the full 86 years. For me though, her subsequent novels cannot rival her debut The Island which I really must re-read again.

Read my reviews of other these books by Victoria Hislop:-
THE FIGURINE
THE STORY
THE SUNRISE

If you like this, try:-
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Quartet’ by Jean Rhys

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THOSE WHO ARE LOVED by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop https://wp.me/p5gEM4-40c via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Sunrise’ by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop #Cyprus #historical

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I’m a big fan of Victoria Hislop’s previous three novels, The Thread, The Return, and The Island so was expecting a lot from the new one, The Sunrise. I was a little disappointed and it’s difficult to pin down why. Victoria HislopThe Cyprus setting is great, the historical setting is stirring, the characters… I didn’t connect as well with them as I did with Alexis and Eleni in The Island. Finally, I decided that the difference between The Sunrise and the Hislop’s earlier books is that it wears its history a little too heavily. That said, it is a fascinating period and one I knew little about, except a memory of a distant cousin who lived near Kyrenia at the time. He and his family were forced to flee their house, empty-handed, running across open countryside towards a cave, dodging bullets being fired from an airplane
The Sunrise tells the story of three families in Famagusta from the sunny days of 1972 when tourism brings riches to Cyprus, to 1974 when a Greek coup forces the island into chaos. Greek Cypriots flee in one direction, Turkish Cypriots flee in the other, and the Turkish army invades to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority. The city of Famagusta empties as people run for their lives. Today, 40 years later, the city is still empty. This is the setting for Hislop’s novel.
Two of the families in The Sunrise – the Georgious and the Ozkans – remain behind in Famagusta, hiding, scavenging for food, keeping silent to avoid capture. One is Greek Cypriot, the other Turkish Cypriot. Initially suspicious of everyone, the families are brought together by the two mothers and encouraged to support each other. This is a story of survival on the edge of war, of starvation, ingenuity, bravery and fear. Sons disappear, the city is bombed, soldiers patrol the streets, and a baby is born. The third family – the Papacostas, owners of the sparkling new hotel The Sunrise – flee to their apartment in Nicosia, locking up their stronghold hotel and leaving valuables in its safe, but taking the danger and emotional attachments with them.
Though the book at times drifts towards impersonal reportage and can feel a little like reading a history book or newspaper report, the accuracy of the complicated political and social situation is clearly explained. The island is heft in two and its population uprooted with possessions, without warning. They are attacked, raped, killed, simply for being ‘the other kind’. Finally they settle into North and South, either side of the east-west dividing line.
Victoria Hislop always writes about places she knows well and that knowledge shines off the page in every sound, smell and touch she conjures up. She was not able to go to Famagusta, the city is still closed off, and had to be content with looking through the wire fence. In The Sunrise she has tackled a hugely complex political and emotional subject. For me, the story took off in 1974 once the Georgious and Ozkans were trapped in the city and fighting to survive. I found Savvas and Aphroditi Papacosta less sympathetic, I’m afraid, perhaps because the story starts in 1972 when they develop their luxury hotel, two years before the Cypriot coup takes place. Perhaps that’s just me, impatient for the action to start.

Read my reviews of other these books by Victoria Hislop:-
THE FIGURINE
THE STORY
THOSE WHO ARE LOVED

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ballroom’ by Anna Hope
‘Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase’ by Louise Walters
‘The Lightning Tree’ by Emily Woof

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SUNRISE by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1dx via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Story’ by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop #shortstories

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I read The Story: Love, Loss & the Lives of Women, edited by novelist Victoria Hislop, on my Kindle, without really appreciating just how much reading was involved for 100 stories. It’s not like holding a hefty book. But I enjoyed every single one of them. Some of the authors were well-known, others were new to me. Some made me laugh out loud (I’m thinking of Dorothy Parker here), others stopped my breath with sadness. I discovered authors I want to explore further: one of the reasons I have always loved short stories.Victoria HislopThe short story form is fascinating. As a reader I am very demanding, like anthology editor Victoria Hislop I want to be instantly grabbed by a story. “Readers are allowed to be impatient with short stories,” she writes. “My own patience limit for a novel which I am not hugely enjoying may be three or four chapters. If it has not engaged me by then, it has lost me and is returned to the library or taken to a charity shop. With a short story, three or four pages are the maximum I allow (sometimes they are only five or six pages long in any case). A short story can entice us in without preamble or background information, and for that reason it had no excuse. It must not bore us even for a second.”
So, my favourite stories? Hislop has divided her selection into three sections so I have chosen three from each.

LOVE:
Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Atlantic Crossing’ – the gentle story of love and longing at a distance. My favourite story of all, I think.

Dorothy Parker’s ‘A Telephone Call’ – the stream of consciousness dialogue of waiting for a telephone call is an everywoman story.

‘The Artist’ by Maggie Gee is about Emma, an unfulfilled wife who employs an East European, Boris, as an odd-job man/builder. He says he is an artist, she doesn’t believe him.

LOSS:
‘The First Year of My Life’ by Muriel Spark. It starts, “I was born on the first day of the second month of the last year of the First World War, a Friday.” An account of war seen through the innocent but at the same time all-knowing eyes of an infant.

‘The Pill Box‘ by Penelope Lively is about the flexibility of imagination. A male teacher and writer is haunted by the past, remembering, wondering how the world would be now if things had happened differently when he was young.

‘The Merry Widow’ by Margaret Drabble tells the story of Elsa Palmer who, after the death of her husband Philip, goes on the summer holiday they had planned together. Grief overcomes her, but in an unconventional way.

THE LIVES OF WOMEN:
‘G-String’ by Nicola Barker is about the triumph of the modern knicker. This made me laugh out loud.

‘Betty’ is the woman who captivates the teenage narrator of Margaret Atwood’s tale. “From time to time I would like to have Betty back, if only for an hour’s conversation.”

‘A Society’ by Virginia Woolf, about a group of young women on the verge of the Great War who make themselves into a “society for asking questions. One of us was to visit a man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar’s study; another was to attend a meeting of business men; while all wee to read books, look at pictures, go to concerts, keep our eyes open on the streets, and ask questions perpetually.”

Read my reviews of other these books by Victoria Hislop:-
THE FIGURINE
THE SUNRISE
THOSE WHO ARE LOVED

If you like this, try:-
‘The Duchess’ by Wendy Holden
‘Anderby Wold’ by Winifred Holtby
‘All the Rage’ by AL Kennedy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE STORY by Victoria Hislop @VicHislop http://wp.me/p5gEM4-N5 via @SandraDanby