Captain Corelli's Mandolin   by Louis de Bernières

April 2006     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

Oh me oh my. It's a good thing that I got near the end of this book on the weekend. Because, you see, it's a terrible, Terrible thing, if one has to stop reading, anywhere within the last hundred and fifty pages. One SHOULD NOT stop there. It's depressing. You don't know if there will be a happy ending or not. If it's a complete tragedy or not. And You wouldn't mind so much if it would be. But you wan't to KNOW. You don't want to leave it, and let it lie there, and have the heroine Thinking that her love is dead. But We don't know if he is. It Sounds like the writer said "He held her in his arms for the last time." -But it COULD have been meant as "He held her in his arms, and it FELT LIKE, for both of them, that it would be the last time."

Anyhow, I had luck, and got within this section on a Sunday morning. So I didn't even get out of bed until after noon. I finished the book first. It's... quite a book. And it's not of a style that I often read. I find myself more often reading books that criticize humanity and society... philosophically; Books that look at the intricate workings of lives, minds, and peoples. And books which are most often fiction. I know, (I think,) that this book was also fiction, but it's set within real circumstances. Every piece of the tale is plausible, and very possibly Has happened to some one. (Not all the parts of the book to one person, but still, each part had a feel of reality.) This book is based in history though. And not a happy History; It's Greece becoming involved in the Second world war, ("Involved" here, meaning "Invaded.") It's not a story of the war though; It's a story of people... who become a part of the war. And a story of the people who endure it, -and those that can't endure it.

It's got so, SO many depressing sides. I've grown up knowing that "War is bad," and that I'm against it, and that it leads most of all to misery and brutality. I've known that many practices of the Nazi party were atrocities. And I've known that there were also atrocities performed by the Communist party not long after the Nazis were beaten. But it's something that I never Thought about. It was something that was never directly presented to me. (Somehow. I've seen "Schindler's list," and "La Vita e Belle, (Life is Beautiful,)" But that was... somehow just different. I need a new Paragraph...

WHY could that be different? Why is it a different thing, the films I've seen that deal with Concentration camps, from the book I've read, which dealt with a Nazi occupation. I think that a part of it was the... shock value. I've known for awfully long, that the "Worst thing the Nazis did," (I put that in quotes not because I question that being the worst thing, but because I learned it at an age when I couldn't judge it for myself. It still can't; I don't know half of the things the Nazi's did. It's certainly the worst I've ever heard of though,) -Ummm... "The worst thing the Nazis did," was the Death Camps.

So, that was something I'd known about since a young age. And when the characters in the films were put into railway cars, I knew what would be coming. If Corelli's Mandolin had been set in a Jewish town, I would have known what to expect. But it wasn't: it was set on a quiet Greek Island. An Island that I never knew was occupied. In a Country that I didn't know got involved in the war at all.

Whereas I knew that the Nazis Soldiers were unspeakably monstrous to their declared enemies, the Jews, I wasn't ready for what was described in this book about their behavior to the simple Greek Populance, Which was anyhow nominally Fascist. I Also wasn't ready for their turning on the Italian, and massacring them. The Italians, who were supposedly their Allies.

And then, eventually, Both the occupying Italians AND Germans were all gone. Peace at last, Right?

Wrong. Dreadfully, terribly Wrong.

That's when the Communist Revolution Came. Not a revolution of all the masses kindly but strongly expelling the Government though. A Revolution of a few, who'd been saving up weapons and ammunition all through the war, and was ready to Impose their ideology on the whole country. And they were as bad, if not worse, than the armies that had invaded. At least the armies had the excuse that they were foreign, and were evil, and heartless towards Greece for that reason. But when turned on by their own neighbours and countrymen... -it's just revolting.

So, have I made my situation, when I was reading it clear? When the woman has lost her love, and the family is living under oppression after oppression, and it's not certain that a single one of them will live. I really didn't want to stop and think about how miserable life is. The only hope was to keep reading, and Find SOME ending, wether it's happy or not.

Anyhow, six paragraphs ago, I was trying to say that I've never been directly presented with Wartime Atrocities before. And I think that's a truth. I've read books dealing with wars, (For whom the bell Tolls, for example.) -But although there was violence, and death... there was humanity. There was some vestige of Honour. There might have been the occasional rape, but it wasn't like this book: Where I clearly felt the... inhuman way that life went on in the village: Rape was just a fact of life for the women there. It was a constant possibility. Just so with beatings, killings, and looting. In other books I've read, such things were presented Once. But here, I felt the was that it became an aspect of their lives, of everyone's lives on the island, for year after year. THAT was the depressing misery that the book showed me.

So, do you feel like reading it now???

Ummm. It's way past time to explain then, that this misery was concentrated in the last quarter of the book. In the rest of it, there was pain, and terror, and deaths, (and all those other depressing things,) but they were then Isolated. (Somewhat as they were in the other War books I've read.) The Italian Occupation of the Island was not Good, but It was not an Oppression. And in between the tragic moments, there was such Vitality, and Joy. I was laughing with tears in my eyes at the best scenes. Each time I picked up the book to read more, I knew that I would have the greatest pleasure from it again. There were so many Good, Honourable people there. Many young, honest men and women, that I got to see growing up, and becoming even Better. And the Blossoming of a Great, deep love between our two main characters.

And This offset all the depression that came in the last quarter of the book. This is what made the book good enough that I can imagine myself reading it again. This, is why you too, who read this review, should also read the book.