Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and Implausible Ending
Review: I had not heard of this book but became wrapped up in the beautifully written humor and tragedy of the love and war stories. However, I found the ending to be needlessly and pointlessly frustrating and tragic. Corelli did not act according to character in failing to rejoin Pelagia. This inconceivable ending basically ruined and brought into doubt the rest of the book and made me angry. What was the purpose of the author's manipulation of the plot in this way? I think it was irresponsible. I don't understand the overriding number of "rave" reviews.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth sticking at it
Review: I read this book a year ago and it still haunts me. - probably the best book I've ever read.It starts with about five different stories at once, which makes it really hard to get into. BUT, its worth sticking with, and somewhere around page 60 you start to piece it all together. Somewhere in the middle you find yourself switching between laughter and tears, sometimes both on the same page, yet all the time a conviction grows that something truly dreadful lies ahead . . . I fully admit to finding a park bench and arriving at work late because I couldn't put the book down sometimes.- and I'm supposed to be a senior manager! Anyone who has been involved in Greek island communities will recognise the characters as true to life, and even today the older generation find it difficult to discuss how the horrors of War entered their quiet and peaceful lives. I thoroughly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: The basics of true love laid bare
Review: If a book can be described as purgatory a cleansing all consuming fire that leaves you pure and uplifted, then this book is it. As I was in the emotial stranglehold of a recent break up my mother recommended me this book. Page by page it took away my pain as it explained the difference between the dream of love and its bitter sweet reality.
A young girl lives in a village on a beautifull greek island. She falls in love with the most handsome man in town. They embody a seemingly flawless love that lasts untill the sadness of war brings undreamt off flaws to light. Love fades, but out of the pain of loss and in the most unlikely circumstances a new love blossoms, deeper and purer than before, but alas impossible.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This may be my favorite novel of all time. Forget about the movie, if you've seen it; don't see it, if you haven't. Read this book. It's tender, touching, heartbreaking, and concludes with one of the most realistically redemptive images I have ever come across. There is no easy path taken anywhere here. This is a book full of magic yet completely grounded in reality. On almost every page, I found myself nodding and saying, "Yes, that is how it is, though I wouldn't have thought to say it that way." And that is what literature is about: truth expressed originally. This book is full of just that. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: I will hold the editor as responsible as the author.
Review: I am so sad, disgusted! For seven years I have wanted to read this book... and up to page 299 (paperback version) it would have rated a minimum four stars for me. I had been warned by friends... they all wanted to know what I would think of the end, because all of them were put off by it. Even so, I was totally unprepared. The last thirty four pages were written by a total stranger, one who was not even remotely acquainted with the people I had come to understand. Their characters and their thoughts/actions were so far removed from those of the previously beautiful thoughtful story, I briefly understood the sentiment of bookburning. Bah. Read 'Cardinal Guzman' or 'Don Emmanuel' instead-- they are great books that I would recommend without qualifications-- or if you must read this book, at least stop when Pelagia finishes writing her history, and save yourself the rude schizophrenic developments following. Again... bah.
Rating: 
Summary: Skilled Narrative Makes a "Cliched" Story Brilliant
Review: I hate to say it, but I picked up this book after having seen the movie. I never like to do it that way, as I would rather have the original images in my head first, so that the secondary interpretation can be compared to the original, not vise versa. However, there were so many things that the movie failed to pick up on that I was stunned at how good the book was. de Bernieres has managed to pick up the voice of each individual character, (as well as his own as the narrator, perhaps angled through the eyes of Dr Iannis) and write them all beautifully and individually. Whereas the mediocre authors get some differences in the speech of their characters, here de Bernieres has taken the speech from the character, instead of trying to force words that he would say into the characters mouth. The reader can see a perplexed Doctor, after having found a dried pea in a patient's ear, trying to keep up his reputation by calling it an "exorbitant auditory impediment" which his uneducated patient would not understand in the slightest, but would obviously try to give of signs of having done so. The change in voice between Dr Iannis, Pelagia (his daughter), Carlos (a homosexual Italian soldier), Mandras (the fisherman who is in love with Pelagia), Corelli (an Italian officer also in love with Pelagia), and Mussolini, are all distinct and make the book far more interesting to read. de Bernieres has gotten inside each character's shoes, and has brought something unique out about all of them, simply through the way he has written about them. He has stated nothing obvious in the demeaning manner of some writers; he has instead left it up to the reader to decide. For example, Mussolini's wandering speech patterns, self-centredness and hipocrisy are shown very well, and while being somewhat comic and exaggerated, show how a man who did the things he did was probably looney. de Bernieres has also steered directly away from the classic, soppy love story that the movie made it out to be. The two main characters never have sex, which makes their relationship all the more complex, and also endearing. The way that he has written this love story, interspersed with opinions from all over the social context, sets it far apart from the wet-weekend books that one can predict the beginning and end of. Although the narrative may appear to be wandering as it is read, on looking back, there is no other way this story could have been told. The view of everyone comes to light, and the more serious subjects, interspersed with the comic interjections of the strongman, the drunken priest, the communist, the mad megalomaniac and the Doctor make this both an enjoyable and an intense read. I couldn't put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: It scared me away from well-reviewed contemporary literature
Review: If I could communicate one message to Louis de Bernieres, author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, it would be this: a high syllable per word average is not a good measure of writing skill. While it is not clear that his patched-together WWII epic would have risen above the level of dimestore romance even had he absorbed this message, in its present incarnation, it is utterly crippled by his failure to. One example (out of hundreds): "The cloth hardened like cardboard, and stiffened into adamantine inflexibility." No word in this sentence conveys any information other than that the cloth was stiff; the second clause could even be restated as "and stiffened into stiff stiffness." The book is filled with redundancies like "effulgent dazzle," "prodigious extremes," "intelligently prescient," and, perhaps most ridiculous, "an eternity of time." He strings together these redundancies with cliches: "a darkness settled over the land." Rather than repeating his own words in these cases, he repeats other people's. On a macroscopic level as well this book fails to live up to its ambitions, or perhaps more accurately, its pretentions. Let's examine them one by one. Is it funny? Set pieces like "Corelli thinks the doctor has taught him to say 'good morning' in Greek, but he's really saying 'son of a whore'" are at most wanly entertaining. Is it a retelling of the Odyssey? It bears as much relation to the Odyssey as O, Brother Where Art Thou?, which is to say, not much. One can only assume that his tenuous allusions to the classic are, like his use of the word "adamantine," at heart an effort to make his book seem more learned than it is. Is it a trenchant anti-war novel? A deconstruction of history as it is written by the victors? The conclusions de Bernieres reaches are facile, his targets fat and slow. In de Bernieres's universe Nazis are bad (one is sort of okay but he's a coward); Fascists are bad, but some Italian soldiers merely suffered under unjust leaders; and Greek peasants, while they may have charmingly rustic squabbles, are good and innocent, except when they are corrupted by Communists. As for his postmodern multivocal pretensions, what's his point? That history should be written to reflect the dissonant narratives that compose it? His narratives aren't interestingly dissonant. They all tell the same story: Nazis are bad, etc. (see above). Any time you do get a contrasting voice, like that of Mussolini early in the book, it's merely to show him up as a buffoon, not to exhibit a genuinely alternative historical perspective. One might partly excuse him for this lack of diversity since he sets the book in WWII, one of the most morally unambiguous geopolitical conflicts he could have chosen. But by contrast, a wonderful WWII novel that succeeds everywhere Captain Corelli's Mandoline fails is Catch-22. It bravely lampoons the American army in WWII, it is darkly, fascinatingly comic in a way that utterly surpasses Corelli's Mandoli's cute little romantic scenes, and Heller finally has an anti war message much more interesting, complicated, and challenging than de Bernieres's: that bravery and nobility is impossible in any war; war is fought among arbitrary, tyrannical, bureaucratic structures; and humans within those structures have only to desert, to be corrupted, or to die. The book succeeds in creating some emotional investment in Corelli and Pelagia, only to cheat the reader with the most implausible, manipulative, and deeply unsatisfying ending imaginable. One character who manages to emerge from the morass of de Berniere's clumsy writing and paper thin characterization is Carlo, the gay soldier in love with Corelli. Only in his story does Corelli's Mandolin begin to reach the heights it strains for and to communicate something of how love expresses itself within the painful confines of war. What a pity Carlo couldn't have imbued his fellow characters--and the prose itself--with some of his richness and dignity.
Rating:
Summary: It scared me away from well-reviewed contemporary literature
Review: If I could communicate one message to Louis De Bernieres, author of Corelli's Mandolin, it would be this: syllable per word average is not a good measure of writing skill. While it is not clear that his patched-together WWII epic would have risen above the level of dimestore romance even had he absorbed this message, in its present incarnation, his novel is utterly crippled by his failure to. One example (out of hundreds): "The cloth hardened like cardboard, and stiffened into adamantine inflexibility." No word in this sentence conveys any information other than that the cloth was stiff; the second clause could even be restated as "and stiffened into stiff stiffness." The book is filled with redundancies like "effulgent dazzle," "prodigious extremes," "intelligently prescient," and, perhaps most ridiculous, "an eternity of time." He strings together these redundancies with cliches: "a darkness settled over the land." Rather than repeating his own words in these cases, he repeats other people's. On a macroscopic level as well this book fails to live up to its ambitions or, perhaps more accurately, its pretentions. Let's examine them one by one. Is it funny? Set pieces like "Corelli thinks the doctor has taught him to say 'good morning' in Greek, but he's really saying 'son of a whore'" are at most wanly entertaining. Is it a retelling of the Odyssey? It bears as much relation to the Odyssey as O, Brother Where Art Thou?, which is to say, not much. One can only assume that his tenuous allusions to the classic are, like his use of the word "adamantine," at heart an effort to make his book seem more learned than it is. Is it a trenchant anti-war novel? A deconstruction of history as it is written by the victors? The conclusions De Bernieres reaches are facile, his targets fat and slow. In De Bernieres's universe Nazis are bad (one is sort of okay but he's a coward); Fascists are bad, but some Italian soldiers merely suffered under unjust leaders; and Greek peasants, while they may have charmingly rustic squabbles, are good and innocent, except when they are corrupted by Communists. As for his postmodern multivocal pretensions, what's his point? That history should be written to reflect the dissonant narratives that compose it? His narratives aren't interestingly dissonant. They all tell the same story: Nazis are bad, etc. (see above). Any time you do get a contrasting voice, like that of Mussolini early in the book, it's merely to show him up as a buffoon, not to exhibit a genuinely alternative historical perspective. One might partly excuse him for this lack of diversity since he sets the book in WWII, one of the most morally unambiguous geopolitical conflicts he could have chosen. But by contrast, a wonderful WWII novel that succeeds everywhere Captain Corelli's Mandoline fails is Catch-22. It bravely lampoons the American army in WWII, it is darkly, fascinatingly comic in a way that utterly surpasses Corelli's Mandoli's cute little romantic scenes, and Heller finally has an anti war message much more interesting, complicated, and challenging than de Bernieres's: that bravery and nobility is impossible in any war; war is fought among arbitrary, tyrannical, bureaucratic structures; and humans within those structures have only to desert, to be corrupted, or to die. The book succeeds in creating some emotional investment in Corelli and Pelagia, only to cheat the reader with the most implausible, manipulative, and deeply unsatisfying ending imaginable. One character who manages to emerge from the morass of de Berniere's clumsy writing and paper thin characterization is Carlo, the gay soldier in love with Corelli. Only in his story does Corelli's Mandolin begin to reach the heights it strains for and communicate something of how love expresses itself within the painful confines of war. What a pity Carlo couldn't have imbued his fellow characters--and the prose itself--with some of his richness and dignity.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful! A delight!
Review: I got this book from my grandmother when she was through with it, a ragged, much abused copy. Apparently it had been passed around her entire circle of friends. I understand why. This is book is lyrical, wickedly funny, tragic, and tender all at once. And the charcters! I fell immediately in love with them. Each has their own distinct and unforgettable, slightly larger than life personality. Told from multiple views and skipping rapidly from one scene to another, this book does have a tendency to make your head spin. This, and some of the rather gross content, does not make this a book for everyone. Corelli's Mandolin also contains sex (though not graphic), homosexuality, and a lot of cursing.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful war story - or love story.
Review: A beautifully written book of war, and love. I am so glad I read it. I agree with the reviewer who said it took him 100 pages to "get into it", but once I passed page 125 or so I was hooked. The narratives at the beginning were confusing, but I really enjoyed it. I did not love the ending, but I didn't hate it either. Very hard to get into, but stick with it.
|
