Cartes Postales from Greece (by Victoria Hislop)

(Amazon UK link)

I didn’t have any idea what to expect when I bought a couple of Victoria Hislop novels from a church book stall nearly three years ago. One or two friends had recommended this author, but although the covers looked appealing and the blurb sounded interesting, they seemed like rather long books to tackle, when I wasn’t sure I would like them. Which is perhaps why it’s taken this long to decide to read them. 

I finished ‘The Island’ a couple of months ago, and liked it very much indeed, so last week I embarked on ‘Cartes Postales from Greece’. As with ‘The Island’ it starts by introducing a young woman. We meet Ellie, who lives on her own in a somewhat dingy flat. She is the recipient of a regular stream of postcards from different locations in Greece - but they’re not addressed to her. They’re to someone unknown - an S Ibbotson, and give no indication of who sent them, other than an ‘A’ at the end. 

Ellie is intrigued by the notes, describing places, giving insights into them, but with a poignant message at the end, wishing that ‘S’ was with the writer. Since Ellie has no way of finding out who ‘S’ might be, she pins the cards up, and they brighten her little flat. So much so that when the cards stop arriving for several weeks, she decides to take a break in Greece and see some of the places for herself. 

As she’s about to leave, she finds a parcel, addressed to the same person, containing a handwritten travel journal by the same person, giving a lot more detail about his travels. 

And there we leave Ellie, moving instead to the substance of the journal which she reads as she starts to discover Greece for herself. And the journal is punctuated by stories, mostly with black-and-white photos to illustrate, as told to ‘A’ by different people he meets.

It’s quite a clever device for what is, essentially, a book of cultural short stories - or anecdotes - which give a flavour of different customs, traditions, and beliefs popular in Greece. I gather all the stories are fictional, although based on what Victoria Hislop encountered on her own travels.  Some of them are rather unpleasant, some are bizarre, and yet all are very readable. The author’s style is good, and she paints pictures of different communities in Greece which feel very believable.  

Eventually the story does return to Ellie, as she comes to the end of the journal. I liked the way the story comes full circle, and it’s a positive ending, if a tad contrived. And yet although I found the book interesting and easy to read, it doesn’t feel like a novel; it’s more of an informal travelogue.  

On the whole I liked it, but it’s not the kind of book I’m likely to read again. If you’re interested in Greece and some of the cultures and customs of the many small communities there, it’s an interesting book to peruse; but there wasn’t really anything in it to grip me. I like to relate to characters in books, and while I could, somewhat, relate to Ellie her part in the book is too small to have any real empathy. 

Review copyright 2023 Sue's Book Reviews

The Island (by Victoria Hislop)

(Amazon UK link)

I had never read anything by Victoria Hislop, although two or three friends had recommended her books to me. Even when I saw a couple of the books on a church stall,  I hesitated, as they looked long and perhaps a bit heavy. But I decided to try them, although it’s taken me nearly three years to pick one of them up to read.

The one I chose was ‘The Island’, although I had no idea what it was about. Apparently it was the author's debut novel. It starts with a brief prologue set in 1953 as a young woman heads to a leper colony. An unexpected opening, and one which didn’t really make sense until much later in the book - but it certainly piqued my curiosity.

The story then moves to 2001, in the same location (Plaka - a seaside resort on the Greek island of Crete). A young woman called Alexis is on a boat, being taken to the deserted small island of Spinalonga, which was formerly a leper colony. Evidently there’s a connection with the prologue, but we don’t actually see much of Alexis, although she seems like an interesting person. 

Alexis, we quickly learn, is on a mission to discover her family roots. She was being brought up in the UK by a Greek mother and English academic father, but her mother has said very little about her past. She’s changed the subject when asked, but now Alexis is grown up her mother has accepted that her daughter wants to know - and she’s written a letter to an old friend whom she’s sure is still alive. Alexis has travelled to Crete with a boyfriend, but is on her own in her explorations, uncertain whether or not she wants to continue her relationship. 

The bulk of the story takes place in the past, beginning in 1939. It’s as if told to Alexis by her mother’s friend, and I was, at first, disappointed: I’d like to have learned more about Alexis herself. And the story from the past is, in places, quite sordid. It starts with Eleni, a teacher from Plaka, who has found some leprous patches on her body. So she has to leave her husband and teenage daughters, and go into exile, to Spinalonga. She will see her husband again from a distance, as part of his job is to take supplies, by boat, to Spinalonga. But she won’t be able to touch him, or to return - in those days, there was no cure for the disease.

I read about the reality of Spinalonga on Wikipedia and elsewhere, after I’d finished the book, and it seems that Victoria Hislop rather glossed over some of the horrors of the situation. We see Eleni move into a small, almost empty hut, but she’s a positive person: she adopts a boy who had to leave his family too, for the same reason, and she does all she can to brighten their lives. The tragedies of separations are shown, and the difficulties of adjusting; but we see very little of the starkness and filth that, apparently, was part of this colony for some years.

It’s a thought-provoking, often moving novel that helped me understand how leprosy could affect ordinary people, and how, even in the 20th century, it still carried a terrible stigma. Most of the story is about the island and its people; while Alexis gets her answers, and learns about her family, there’s a great deal of extra story which sets the scene and shows the background (albeit in a somewhat rose-coloured way) and it took me a while to work out exactly who were Alexis’s relatives. We don’t discover anything about her mother until much later in the book - and that’s quite a sordid, shocking part of the story, mostly unrelated to leprosy.

It was perhaps a mistake to start reading this book in a period when I was very busy with visiting family; the book wasn’t so gripping that I wanted to pick it up at every available moment, so I mostly only read for twenty minutes or so each evening, and my mind was so full I often had to look back a few pages to remind myself of what was happening. 

Overall, however, it’s a very readable book. I thought it extremely well written, and it painted a vivid picture of a situation and lifestyle I knew nothing about. I’m sure the overall story will stay with me for a long time - and I look forward to reading other books by this author in future.

Review copyright 2023 Sue's Book Reviews