Monday 21 May 2012

Read in 2012 - 13: The Island

Once again, it was Mary, my mother-in-law, who provided me with reading material to last me a while; when my sister and I recently spent a week in England, she had a pile of books ready for me to take home, and I had to make use of my sister's suitcase as well as my own in order to get everything in.

The first one from the pile I read was "The Island" by Victoria Hislop.
It is mainly the story of a family who are hit by tragic events, such as two of their members contracting leprosy, one being murdered and all that against the backdrop of a life of general hardship in a small fishermen's village on Crete in the years before, during and after WWII.
Today's frame is provided by a young woman who finally wants to find out more about her mother's past; she knows her mother grew up on Crete before coming to England, where she married and had children, but other than that, very little is revealed, and strangely enough, never really questioned by her family until now.

The young woman travels to the village she knew her mother spent part of her childhood in, and meets an elderly lady who knew her family very well. A letter the woman takes to this lady from her mother instructs her to tell the young woman everything she wants to know.
That in itself is strange; if I had a dark secret in my past, I would want to be the one to reveal it, if I thought it appropriate and/or necessary; I certainly would not have anyone else tell what could always only be their side of the story, however intimate they'd known me and my folks in the past.
Also, none of what comes to light about the family has any negative reflection on the woman who chose to conceal her past so completely; so one really wonders why she took all that trouble and was so secretive. On the contrary, it should have made her proud to tell of those of her family members who had, against all odds, created happy, fulfilled lives for themselves and gave her a loving home when her own parents could not.

But, that and some other rather illogical things aside (real life and real people are often illogical, so it is hardly a point to be overly critical about), the story itself is very well done and the places and characters captured well enough to set the mental cinema in motion.

Spinalonga, where most of the story happens, was a leper colony until the late 1950s. The author of this book has, I am sure, travelled there personally and done a lot of research to get the facts right, because it all sounds plausible. There are pictures and information about the island on this website; it certainly enhanced my reading experience.
The author's website is here; I always like to know a bit more about the person who wrote what I read, don't you?

To summarise, "The Island" is a good read, the story takes some rather unexpected twists and turns while other things are a bit too predictable, but everything I found out about Spinalonga was certainly worth it. That colony of outcasts and the island itself combine two things that hold great appeal to me: the art of Making Do, and an abandoned place that is being reclaimed by nature (more or less - Spinalonga has remained uninhabited since the colony was closed, but tourists are regularly ferried there. Some buildings have been reconstructed, and there is a small museum about the history of the desease and the colony itself.).

12 comments:

  1. Hello Meike:
    We have never read Victoria Hislop as, for some reason, she has not had the appeal for us that her husband's [Ian Hislop's]witty,somewhat scurrilous and often irreverent writing has. However, as it happens, a friend has just read this book and has also recommended it to us, so we may now be tempted.

    In the days of television viewing, now long over, we used to very much enjoy Ian Hislop on 'Have I Got News For You'. And, perhaps rather naughtily, we wonder if Victoria Hislop would have merited publication if it were not for her more famous spouse?

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    1. Hello Jane and Lance, only after I had finished reading this book, on doing research for my review here, I found that it had been top of a bestseller list of 2007 and Newcomer of the Year and what not. Ian Hislop I know nothing at all about, so those unexpected information came rather as a surprise.

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  2. This must be a fascinating book, in some ways. When I was in high school I read Miracle at Carville by Betty Martin (pseudonym for Edwina Meyer). Your post inspired me to see if I could find anything on the internet about this and I did.
    http://miracleatcarville.blogspot.com/ and http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20128323,00.html.

    This woman lived to be over 90 after being cured of leprosy, though she still, apparently, had symptoms from time to time.

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    1. Thank you for the links, Kristi! I have just left a comment on the blogspot one.

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  3. The cover of this book was immediately recognisable but the storyline is not really one that appeals to me at the moment. You have made me want to know a bit more about the disease though.

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    1. Graham, exactly my feelings - I did not like the book for the storyline (which wasn't that brilliant, really), but I was intrigued by the information about leprosy and how it was dealt with there and then, both by the sufferers and their families, and by society in general.

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  4. Ah the mental cinema! Love that phrase! Mine's closed down for the moment, as I seem incapable of holding a thought from one sentence to the next.
    Would it be possible to let us know what your next book is, and we could start a book club?

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    1. Macy, I know what you mean. It was pretty much the same for me the first weeks after Steve's death, I started doing something and broke off, wandered to another room and started something else, and couldn't focus on much coherent thought or action for a while.
      A book club is a great idea! But I'm not sure what I'll start on reading next; it will probably be some non-fiction, or another one of the books Mary gave me. I have so much choice at the moment that I'll decide spontaneously, since none of the books is from the library and has to be returned.

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  5. I'm not sure it is strange not to question one's origins. (Sorry about the double negative.) I've always been fascinated by family history but a number of people I know don't even know where their grandparents were from and have no interest in the matter.

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    1. Yes, I should not measure other people by my own ways; just because I have always known who my grandparents were, and my great-grandparents, and where they all came from and lived and what they did for a living, doesn't necessarily mean that others want to know that, too.
      But wouldn't it be natural curiosity of a child growing up, wanting to know who the people in the photograph on their mother's bedside table are? And where they lived, and what they did? And wouldn't a young person's curiosity be piqued all the more if the answers they got were rather secretive and incomplete?

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  6. I've just re-read my comment and it sounds a bit critical / argumentative. It wasn't meant that way - just a vague observation really.

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    1. And I didn't understand it in an argumentative way, John, don't worry!

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