Corelli's Mandolin

Rating:
Summary: My all time favorite book
Review: I have read and re-read this book and as I was browsing back through the new reviews I noticed my original review is gone! If I want to give someone a heartfelt gift, I give them this book (and I have given many away!) They just don't get any better than this. This book is full of wonderful, unique writing (each chapter is from a different perspective - do you want to get to know Mussolini???); it has humor; it's full of music; it has sincere, intense relationships: father-daughter, boy-girl, boy-boy. Words are inadequate - if you haven't read it.. you're in for a treat.

Rating:
Summary: amost the best book I ever read
Review: I was captivated as soon as I started reading Corelli's Mandolin. At times I laughed out loud, or looked around for someone with whom to share a passage because it was so amusing or moving. There were times I felt tears well in my throat and times I was so angry I wanted to wring someone's neck. The language was delicious, both beautiful and rich. I was sure I would tell people it was the best book I ever read, but felt betrayed by the last quarter of the novel. It wasn't that it compressed events or even that the interest and passion waned as compared to earlier chapters. I felt, rather, that the way the story unwound seemed completely implausible and bitterly belied the sincerity and pathos of the early parts. It was as if I listened captivated to a guest tell stories of youth, love, war and suffering, only to have him say "just kidding, I made it all up" several hours later. Despite the disappointing dénouement, I can still highly recommended Corelli's Mandolin.

Rating:
Summary: Romantic, Informative, Graphic...All at once!
Review: I'll be just another voice in the chorus praising this wonderful novel. And if the ending is somehow weak, it's only because one compares it with the rest of the book...

I need to add only two observations:

The way time seems to compress towards the end of the book is consistent with Pelagia's age (for those in your twenties out there, what this means is that most days or weeks in our youth are so loaded with meaning, events, or simply with "life", that they weight as much as years in the middle age, or a decade toward the end...). If DeBernieres spends chapters covering a few months during Pelagia's youth, he slides over decades in a few lines when she's in her 40's. How sad, and at the same time revealing...

Also, I would have liked to see more of the irony of changing times in the contemporary Cephalonia: Greece is welcoming, in its typical warm hospitality, thousand of German and American tourists each summer (the ones that inflicted the atrocities, and the ones that allowed them to happen, through Roosevelt's quick decision). On many hotel beaches there are organized activities for young children that are run only in German, and practically every Greek remotely connected to the tourist industry speaks English...Made me wonder, anybody there remembers? I would have liked to see this in the book.

Rating:
Summary: A great book diminished by an inadequate ending.
Review: Corelli's Mandolin is an incredible and engrossing book- at once both panoramic and personal, elucidating truths both universal and individual. BUT de Bernieres and his editor cheated the ambitious and addicted readers who become engaged in this novel with an inadequate ending that belittles two of the main characters, diminishing them in the reader's eye. It is as though the editor told the author he better wrap it up... and quick. I will recommend this book (but not to the faint of heart) with a warning about the ending.

Rating:
Summary: A truly magnificent book
Review: I think I can best sum up how how wonderful "Correli" is by the fact that of the five people I know who've read it, four think it's the best book they've ever read.

A towering achievement, wonderfully moving and engagingly witty. Yes, it potentially has some flaws - some people find the opening a little slow, others don't like the ending - but I could not recommend it more highly to other readers.

Rating:
Summary: This was a fantastic read. I highly recommend this one.
Review: I was magically transformed to another time and another land. It was a beautiful love story that conveyed passion, joy and sadness. A very magical and lyrical story although I didn't care for the ending. The book was well researched and I learned about Greek history. The only bad thing was the book had to end. I can't stop thinking about the characters and wish I could find another book like this one. I am tempted to read this one again. A good summer read.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't want it to end!
Review: I loved this book, and like many of the reviewers on this page, I didn't want it to end. I've heard that de Bernieres has written another chapter to the book, written after he got feedback from eyewitnesses of the war in C. Does anyone know where I can get hold of this extra chapter?

Rating:
Summary: Can't get it out of my mind.
Review: It has been weeks since I finished Corelli's Mandolin and I still can't get it out of my mind. I can't think of a better book I've read. However, I give it a 9 instead of a 10 because of the dissappointing ending.

Rating:
Summary: A magnificent, deeply moving novel of history and humanity
Review: CORELLI'S MANDOLIN is one of the finest historical novels I have ever read, but that praise only limits the book's power and scope. Louis De Bernieres not only recreates the specific historical time and place of Cephallonia during the Second World War; he gives to his story and his characters the timelessness that only great literature manages to achieve. This novel is one of the greatest indictments of war, and one of the greatest testaments to the indomitable human spirit, in literature. It spans the full range of human emotions from joy and humor to grief and stoic endurance. It is little short of a miracle.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Written & Engaging in Style
Review: Although it has been a few years since I have read Corelli's Mandolin, I am still struck by the story line, the language and the imagery created by the author. While not an "easy" read, it is a novel worthwhile of one's time and effort. And the scene with the suitor getting shards in his butt is guaranteed to make one laugh out loud.