Rating: Summary: A brilliant masterpiece Review: Corelli's Mandolin is a twentieth century War and Peace. I have never been so moved by a novel. The tragedy of war masterfully captured in Greece, birthplace of tragedy. De Bernieres beautifully evokes both humanity's potential for heroism and selflessness and its ability to degrade into brutality and barbarism. He gives us a fascinating history of modern Greece while telling the simple story of good people buffeted by the forces of war. World War II and its aftermath, which so battered the Hellenes, also allowed them to regain their historic stature as the archtype of the European ideal. While the novel is full of sorrow for innocence lost and lives wasted, it is ultimately uplifting. For those of us who have traveled in Greece and learned to love its people and its culture, Corelli's Mandolin is a trip into a familiar land in which, for the first time, you notice its awesome majesty.
Rating: Summary: A richly drawn, beautiful novel Review: Set on a small Greek island at the onset of German and Italian occupation, Corelli's Mandolin delves into the effects of the war on its various victims and participants. The characters are complex and invoke both laughter and pathos from the reader. The love story between Captain Corelli and Pellagia while interesting in its own right, is not the only fascinating component of the novel. The eccentricities of the local inhabitants, the feeling of compassion that both occupied and occupier inspire, and the tragedy that befalls Greece both during and after the war make Captain Corelli a worthy read. Corelli's Mandolin is a didactic tale: however, it never falls into the all too easy trap of becoming sanctimonious. Its author can be credited with pulling off that delicate balance with aplomb.
Rating: Summary: old and tired Review: Yet another old and tired love story that adds little to the genre - but what is so troubling is the typical caricature of the Greek as some swarthy illiterate AND the glaring inaccuracies of the politics of the time. Yes, it is fiction, but the author did not made an attempt to mask his political leanings. The real Corelli even had took issue with this book.
Rating: Summary: If you don't read it you'll soon be the only one who hasn't Review: This is the kind of book that seems to have everything. It first became popular by word of mouth rather than by any great publicity drive. In particular, when booksellers were confronted by a customer saying 'what shall I read?' they knew they could comfortably recommend Captain Corelli to just about anyone. It's a war story, a love story, a travel story (Greek islands, Mediterranean vibes etc), a political story, a tragedy, a romance and a comedy. This makes it a great book to buy as a gift for someone else, as tens of thousands have. Of course, whether this mixture of elements actually works in a novel you'll have to judge for yourself. My own view is that de Bernieres succeeds in what he attempts. Many people have complained that the start is too slow and the ending unsatisfying. I think that's a bit like calling a sandwich boring because it's made out of bread. You have to savour the whole thing to get the benefit. One criticism I would uphold, though, is of the politics. de Bernieres portrays the Greek resistence to Nazism as useless and evil. This is simply a misrepresentation of the facts, based on a strong anti-communist bias. There's nothing wrong with being anti-communist, but misrepresenting history doesn't help the argument.
Rating: Summary: What a load of garbage !!!! Review: What a load of garbage !!!! This book depicts the British as the saviours of Greece and the Greek communists as savages. Though there was some excesses by the Greek communists, it pales in comarison to the deceit of the British metered out during and after the war. Also as always, western authors and (movie makers) depict the islands and Greece in an image they want to see. Never the image Greeks see of themselves. Non-Greeks would be surprised how different these two viewpoints can sometimes be. If people can stop romanticising about the characters and the love triangle, maybe they can buy a history book which tells them what actually did happen in that period.
Rating: Summary: Great epic novel but beware of biased history Review: If taken at face value, an epic love story, Corelli's Mandolin is by far one of the best. The reason I gave it 5 stars is just that. The writing is wonderful and as a Greek, he seemed to capture a lot of our quirky traits. I would like to make it clear that the author does have a strong anti-communist agenda and portrays the Greek communists in a very biased sense. At the same time he makes his countrymen (the British) out to be saviors which really contradicts the history of that period. This fact has made the script writers for the movie change the script so as to be more true to history than the author. If you are looking for a good read (not very difficult as some reviewers have suggested) this book does the job beautifully. His characters are very robust and the author does a wonderful job in his descriptions not only of the character's but of the island itself. A great novel!
Rating: Summary: A Great Disappointment Review: Reading "Corelli's Mandolin" is like enduring a forced march through a bad history lecture inhabited by cardboard, two-dimensional characters, all the while sorting out jumbled narrative viewpoints along the way and trying to make some logical assessment of the incredible ending.The action takes place on the Greek island of Cephallonia populated by a cast of stock exaggerated peasant salt-of-the-earth types, to be joined by comic-opera, ineffectual Italians, villainous communists, nasty Nazis and stiff upper-lip British. The stereotypes in place, this would seem to be a recipe for comedy or farce, but this is World War II, and when calamity arrives, it is difficult to empathize with the fate of such imperfectly realized characters. Only the doctor, Iannis, and his daughter, Pelagia, and to some extent Corelli are presented with any dignity and when tragedy strikes, the author achieves some of his best writing. This is not to say that the plotting gets any better. The rivals for Pelagia's affections disappear for a considerable part of the narrative, in fact a large number of minor characters whose roles were ill-defined to begin with, are put out of their misery by the middle of the novel. The events of the war in the Aegean theatre are admittedly complicated, but instead of being experienced solely through his characters' eyes, the author interrupts the narrative to deliver them as history lessons of about a page at a time, with an exceedingly jingoistic British slant on what was going on. The doctor's life and fate would indicate the source of inspiration for this novel to be Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" - a world war followed by civil war, ordinary people caught up in the turmoil and the ideological battles which follow. Doctor Iannis, like Zhivago, is taken off by partisans and returns a broken man. The musical instrument as symbol of civilization runs as a constant theme - the mandolin for Corelli, the balalaika for Zhivago. But Pasternak's narrative skills created a classic war novel with powerfully drawn characters engaged in a tragedy with an emotionally satisfying ending. As many reviewers have noted, the last section of "Corelli's Mandolin" has no internal logic at all and dribbles off into futility leaving readers feeling cheated, even if they liked parts of the novel. Hollywood with its talent for making bad historical movies will have a field day with this script.
Rating: Summary: Even trashier Review: Here am I again, more jaundiced than ever about this pap (see my review dated August 17). Since too many other reviewers seem to dwelve in trivial details while still delighting in the book's "wit", something else needs to be added: 1. The photo on the cover does not show Italian soldiers in uniforms for the Greek front. Those were the uniforms for the African campaign, and this particular photo might go back to the Ethiopian campaign of 1935-36, not even to WW2. 2. DeBernières passes off as authentic names of real-to-life Italian officers, fictitious names given them by Venturi in his 1963 book, already quoted ("Bandiera Bianca a Cefalonia"). These first two points mark out DeBernières' superficiality. Now, let's go on to his ignorance, which ill becomes somebody who passes himself off as a writer. 3. As another reader points out in an Amazon review published on August 14, Greek has its own alphabet, which is not the same as the Cyrillic alphabet of Russian, and other Slavonic languages. With reference to the ridicule poured by De Bernières on Italians for being unfamiliar with the Cyrillic alphabet, he should be reminded that on no occasion Allied troops were ever noted to be masters of the language spoken in the countries they were occupying, including Italy, or even cared very much to be understood by the "natives": with them, it had to be English in one of its variants (Queen's, cockney, Americal slang, Australian/New Zealander, etc.). Allied occupation troops were and are known for keeping to their PX's, swilling down beer and speaking poker as their second language. 4. The final point I want to make known here is that those almost 10,000 deaths were also determined by the fact that, when two warships of the Italian Navy sailed from the port of Brindisi (a short distance to Cephalonia) to bring help to the Acqui Division, they were called back by a British admiral (name of Peters)and reprimanded for having taken off port withous HIS permission. Those deaths can, therefore, be laid at the door of British callosity. I hope this'll be the last time I'm stimulated to writing like this, it gives me a sour taste in my mouth and makes me retch.
Rating: Summary: Love, War, Horror, Tragedy, History & Philosophy Review: I am an eclectic reader (Steele to Homer). I was very lucky indeed to have received CORELLI'S MANDOLIN as a parting gift from a visiting cousin whom I had not seen in over 30 years."Try this, it's excellent" she said, as she handed me the book and headed off towards her gate at the airport. I must say that this book was for me, one of the richest reading experiences of my life. I cried, laughed loudly, became angry,went to the library for resource material to supplement what I was learning historically, and started compiling a list of "new words" with my dictionary close at hand. Not to even suggest that this is a tedious academic read! It was electric, romantic and fulfilling. It was never boring, and I was truly sad when it ended, but impatient to give it to my best friend to read!
Rating: Summary: Witty trash Review: The one-star rating is for the cost of the paper the book is printed on, and for its one merit: reading bad literature makes one appreciate all the more good literature. Let it be clear that I'm trying very hard to moderate my terms here. As all editorial reviews and 215 previous Customer Reviews have described, this novel revolves around the love story of the usual sentimental trio: a "he", the Italian Captain Corelli, "the invader"; a "she", the beautiful native girl Pelagia; an "another", the native fisherman Mandras). They all rave about the author's wit. Now, it just so happens that the love plot and the witticisms are superimposed on the background of the occupation of the Greek island, Cephalonia, by a unit of the Italian Army, the "Acqui" Division, during WW2. These Italian troops were the same men who, with no supplies and out of communication with a high command that had ceased to exist after the September 8th, 1943, armistice, put up from September 15 to 22 an all-out, fierce resistance against the Germans who had intimated the Italians should side up with them. 1,300 Italians were killed in combat; 5,000 were mass-executed by machine-gunning, or shot in the back of the head, by the Germans for refusing to do so; 3,000 died when their overcrowded ships hit mines on the way to the mainland. This British author with a typically French name wallows in the time-honored, rancid tendency of Anglo-Saxon (British and American) writers to express supercilious opinions about Italy and Italians as spaghetti-eating mandolin players and - this is a new twist in this book - homosexuals worthy of the Debrett's and Burke's Peerage Chronicles. Such slander surfaces especially when it comes to the topic "Italians at War". This book delivers a second bullet to the back of the head of those thousands dead and their tragedy, but this time the bullet is made of mud. Making witticisms about the dead of a similar tragedy is, at least, in bad taste. It is understood that Hollywood is now producing a motion picture: seeing how a movie is generally worse than the book it's taken from, may all gods on Olympus help us. Any new intentional readers, beware; any of the previous 215 ones, who may want to cleanse their minds of this manure, can read "Bandiera Bianca a Cefalonia" (White Flag at Cephalonia) by Marcello Venturi, published 1963: it has had fifteen translations (including an English one, so that shouldn't be a problem). It might be signaled here that Amazon.com lists another book, "Divisione Acqui a Cefalonia: Settembre 1943" (no indication of the author) which, however, is out of print. De Bernières ought to have stuck to a more homey ground, and applied his wit to the epics of the British army, for instance setting up his novel in Malaya (surely, no lack there of handsome English officers, native sloe-eyed beauties and native fishermen), where the Limeys were mauled by a Japanese force 1/3 their strength, using 6,000 bicycles as means of transportation. This is not a book to waste money on.
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