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Summary: Life as it is from every angle of emotions
Review: The love story of Pellagia and Antonio, is only the frame work in which the delicacy and madness of the human adventure through life, is exposed in such a fantastic fashion, that if an being from another planet ever reads this novel, he will wonder through space in order to feel what it is to be in this planet for a while. Mr. De Berniers makes of the reading experience such a pleasure, that you wonder which estrange being decided to invent the television. The tempo of this book is intense from the second paragraph (if not the first) onwards and the humor and wit are elements which do not leave the scene in one single page, event through it most dramatic moments. Maybe it Was Milan Kundera who wrote that the tragic is always absurd and the absurd is usually laughable. I believe that Mr. De Benieres adhere to this point of view and put is right into the readers mind and heart.
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Summary: well written, informative novel in historical terms of the f
Review: The novel is a deep assessment of life in a specific area of the world during WWII. The land, the people, the conflicts, the pain and suffering, the elan vital are brought to life for the reader. This book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the searchers of perpetual pleasure. It is well written and deeply engrossing.
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Summary: Captivating and well-written, but not as good as I expected.
Review: This book was recommended to me, and I found myself completely bored until about page 100. We are not even introduced to Captian Corelli until 1/4 way through the book. The character development was devine, and you find yourself wrapped up in wartime Greece. At first, Pelagia seems to have no depth at all, but as the book goes on, we find that she grows more and more as a character, and we are taken with her as she suffers, rejoices, and grieves. Captain Corelli is irresistabely charming, as is Carlo and the doctor. The book sweeps you away into its story, but at the end, leaves you hanging and feeling brushed off. The author goes through 40 years in about 80 pages, if that. The ending feels like reading a synopsis and not a story. I would recommend this book, however, I wouldn't get anyone's hopes up. It definitely had many powerful parts that made me unable to put it down, but other parts were drab and boring. To me, it says something about a book when it takes 100 pages to get into it. Not nobel prize worthy, but definitely a good read. It opened my eyes to the Italian and Greek roles in WWII.
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Summary: Best book I've read in a long time and I'm an avid reader
Review: This beautiful and haunting book manages to mix together the most sublime and abominable of feelings and events of the human experience. Love, war, humor, cultutal idiosincracies, hate, homosexuality, hope, history and survival. Very few authors and books have accomplished the merging of such powerful and contradictory experiences in such a deep and thoughtful manner. Each character is defined in a realistic and meaningful way.You will never forget this book and all the questions and feelings it will provoke in you. Most of all, it is all about hope and the permanence of real love in an uncertain and changing world.
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Summary: Captain Corelli's ending
Review: I wonder whether the last two reviewers, who express their disappointment over the ending of this book, aren't missing the point. Perhaps De Bernieres was trying to illustrate how, in the light of the intesity of the characters' experiences during the war, what followed was inevitably an emotional 'anticlimax'. The fact that the last 40 years of the story come across in a detached and narrative style, may infact just represent the relative emptiness of the post war period for those that had been through the extremes of the war.
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Summary: It's a pitcher's no hitter stopped by the last batter
Review: The book details people and events that are rarely exaimined. Who ever thought of what was going on in Greece in WWII. The book is excellent page after page going beyond all expectations until the end of the war during the last couple chapters where the story loses its magic. I honestly wish I had not read them and would have instead let myself create an alternative ending for these characters that I had come to care about. His style, and this ending, can be better understood however if one reads the trilogy begining with The War of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts. This man's imagination is more vast than the sky.
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Summary: Excellent for the most part, but very disappointing ending
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the first 90% of this novel. The character development and day to day detail of WWII Greece were enthralling. However, in the last 40 pages the author covers 40 years in an almost outline form and generates a very disappointing and unsatisfying ending. If the last 40 pages were more developed and as fleshed-out as the first 400 pages, I would have gladly read-on for 200 pages more.
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Summary: Good beyond hope!
Review: I didn't know people still wrote stories like this in this cynical age of shortened attention spans. As others have commented, it will have you crying and shaking your fists in anger - sometimes simultaneously. The first few pages are a slog. The ending is flat and conventional compared to the wildly imaginative middle, but it is churlish for the diner to complain about the coffee when the chef has just served up such a magnificent meal. I do wish the author had supplied a glossary. This is the first book in living memory that required a dictionary to understand - and not always an english one at that! Email me at chowkwan@alumni.caltech.edu if you'd like a (partial) glossary. -- ray
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Summary: A powerful, captivating novel about the passions of life.
Review: This novel dazzled me with its descriptive prose, its historical scope, and its emotional energy. The characters are beautifully developed within a story that draws at the human pathos. All that is at the heart of humanity is found in this novel--love, war, death, politics, family. The chapter about the firing squad is one of the most powerufl I have ever read, it left me shaken with feeling. Truly an accomplishment, I recomend it to everyone I know. I wish the ending were not so drawn out, just a minor complaint in an otherwise wondeful book.
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Summary: Hard to start, hard to finish
Review: This book was thrust at me with the words "You'll love it!" The beginning pages were tedious, but as soon as the village strong man shows up, things start to roll nicely. The characters are beautifully drawn and frequently hilarious, and the heart pangs of Pelagia are as real as they are painful to experience. The book takes us up higher and higher, delighting in the beauty of Greece, the wackiness of the people, and the love story unfolding. Then war intrudes in all its ugly ways, and we are utterly dashed. Such a high and low is rarely achieved in a book, and this is its true accomplishment. The ending feels wrong, somehow, not true to life. But the book leaves us smiling, and that's OK, too. The bottom line: not a masterpiece, but far superior to most books you'll read this year.
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