Eurydice Street

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written account of daily life in today's Athens
Review: In my search for books that would give me a sense of what it's like to live in contemporary Greece, I found Eurydice Street, a book by an anthropologist who is married to a former expatriate Greek. The author and her husband decided in 2001 to move to Greece to live, and raise their two young daughters as Greeks. They find a house in Athens on Eurydice Street, and begin their first year living in Athens as Greek citizens. This book is the story of that year. I have read several books about modern Greece, but Eurydice Street is one of only two (the other being Dinner with Persephone) that I consider outstanding. By "outstanding", I mean that not only is the book well written, but it goes beneath the surface to convey not just customs, practices and descriptions of landscape, but the psychological and feeling aspects of life in the Greek culture. I came away feeling that I understand something about the way Greek people experience life.

Ms. Zinovieff writes extremely well, and she brings her anthropologist's eye for cultural norms and folkways to her account. The book takes us through the year, starting in the dead heat of August, and each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of Greek culture -- the festival of Panagia, Oxi Day, November 17, the Greek way of celebrating Christmas, which is to celebrate the New Year instead, and of course, Easter. Even though the chapters each focus on a particular event in Greek life, they flow naturally because the author experiences these events as part of her family's daily life.

By the time you've finished the book, you feel that if you went to Greece to live for a period of time, you would be going to a familiar place that you understand. This is a wonderful book, and I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Moving to Athens
Review: This charming book was written by a British lady who goes to live in Athens with her Greek-born husband and pre-adolescent daughters. The fact that she is an anthropologist gives her analysis of the city and the Greeks a depth and completeness they would not otherwise have. She loves the Greeks and their ways of living and their values, but she is not therefore blinded to the way they sometimes take moral shortcuts and fail to live up to who and what they claim to be. Her overriding goal is to fit in and be accepted as a Greek wife and mother and citizen. She is delighted when her daughters rapidly learn the language. She relishes her new Greek friendships. She is saddened by the fast pace of urbanization and bemoans the way it combines all the country's worst traits: corruption, money-madness, rejection of traditional values. She knows Greeks have no monopoly on these traits but she hates to see them in a country she loves so thoroughly. The author has quite a sound sense of history and is keenly aware of all the historical and ethnic elements that make up modern Greece. Highly recommended.