Sunday, July 15, 2007
The Island by Victoria Hislop
This cliche-ridden book is the story of four generations of women from a Cretan family. There is a certain amount of historical interest in the detail of the leper colony of Spinalonga, but for the most part I found this a very averagely written 'airport' novel, which gallops along trying to cover a century of life on a corner of Crete. Hislop tries to do too much, and succeeds in creating a sketchy family saga/romance, touching on some local customs and traditions, but failing to really delve beneath the surface of the characters.
This cliche-ridden book is the story of four generations of women from a Cretan family. There is a certain amount of historical interest in the detail of the leper colony of Spinalonga, but for the most part I found this a very averagely written 'airport' novel, which gallops along trying to cover a century of life on a corner of Crete. Hislop tries to do too much, and succeeds in creating a sketchy family saga/romance, touching on some local customs and traditions, but failing to really delve beneath the surface of the characters.
