Moving and Horrific. (Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres)

Member Name: KingHerrod

Product:	Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Date:	26/07/01 (773 review reads)
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Some novels are emotional, some stimulate thought, some educate the reader slightly as to a time or a place, some books make you laugh and some are written for pure entertainment. Some novels are written in beautiful expressive language, which creates an image in the readers mind and some use sharp quick prose to move the plot along. It is a rare event when a book combines all of these factors and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin combines all this and more. This is quite simply the best book that I have read this year. Better than White Teeth, better than Chocolat and better than Small World.

Ok, so you know the bias, I loved this book, lets tell you about it and why I loved it so much.

Written by Louis De Bernieres, the author of acclaimed work such as The War of Don Emanuel’s Nether Parts, Senor Vivo and the Cocoa Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, the author finally with Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth writers award for best book in 1995. Despite the foreign name De Bernieres was born in London and still lives there today and remains very much a British author.

The book is epic, set in a small village on the small Greek island of Cephallonia and spanning the period from the fascist emergence in Europe, through the Second World War and on to the end of the twentieth century. Central to the plot and holding it all together is Pelagia, a local Greek woman and daughter of the local doctor, Doctor Iannis and destined to experience love of two kinds. Pelagia, first falls for Mandras a Greek fisherman, poorly educated, but full of the joys of youth, but when Mandras joins up with the Greek resistance of the Italian invasion and fails to reply to any of Pelagia’s letters, her love withers.

War continues and the Italian’s useless assault on Greece is rescued by the NAZIS, with Greece finally ceding to Italian and German occupation in 1941. In Cepallonia a certain Capt
ain Antonio Corelli arrives and is billeted to stay with the doctor and his daughter. Love blossoms between the invader and the invaded and Pelagia and Antonio embark on an illicit affair full of love and mutual respect. Corelli and the Italians are loathed by the Greeks, but as a solider, whose real love is music (thus the mandolin of the title) and has no ambitions to brutalise the islanders, he is accepted as a necessary evil, who is really not that bad.

What makes this book epic, is that tied in with this love triangle are plot lines regarding the political situation in Greece and the unfolding of a bloody and brutal part of the Second World War that remains rather a sideshow to historians. Mussolini is amusingly portrayed as a cat-killing lunatic and the Greek communists as worse than the NAZI oppressors.

To add a touch of lightness to the plot, Pelagia and the Doctor adopt a pet Pine Martin, called Psipsina, and her antics come as a light relief due to the fact that certain parts of the book are shocking.

What happens to Cephallonia, Pelagia and Antonio, I shall leave for you to find out when you read the book, but the story is touching, witty and amusing, whilst exploring the brutality of fascism and the NAZI occupation.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a deeply historical book, the love story is set amongst events that actually happened on Cephallonia and left deep scars on the islanders. What you must remember about historical novels is that they are not history books. The events are portrayed from the perspective of the author. Greece in the Second World War is not something that I know much about and therefore I cannot comment on the historical accuracy of what happened. But with my little knowledge, I can see there is not that much distortion of actual factual events, it is more the character of history that is difficult to judge. De Bernieres historical portrayal has come in for virulent criticism from the
Cephallonian people and survivors of the war time era, in particular his portrayal of the Greek communists, so much so that in the Greek version of the book, under pressure, De Berniere has had to re-write certain sections. De Berniere, however, believes that the book portrays the truth of the inaction of the ELA (the Greek Communist resistance in the war) towards the NAZIS and the atrocities that they committed to the Greek people during and after the war. Certain Greek veterans however, feel that the view espoused in the book that the ELA, were merely waiting for the NAZIS to leave, whilst offering little meaningful resistance while the occupation took place, before themselves terrorising the country with weapons supplied by the British to fight the NAZIS, is wrong and casts a slur on the country. What is clear is this book has caused huge controversy. However, in the book itself De Berniere, alludes to the difficulty of writing history, through Doctor Iannis, the doctor is portrayed as trying to write a history of Cephallonia and despairs as he cannot remain completely objective. Perhaps, De Berniere was in a sense talking about his own struggle with his own historical writing.

De Bernieres’ book is littered with themes, both human and political. On the human side it is about love in all forms, the ache this can cause, not just with the love of a partner, but love between a father and daughter; unrequited love is explored in the form of Carlo the gay Italian soldier who falls first for Fransesco (another Italian) and then for Antonio.

Politically, a hatred of extremism shines through, fascists are poked fun at and communism given an ideological pasting by Dr Iannis. The British are left, portrayed as well intentioned fools, who left Greece to suffer as it was not deemed vital to the war effort and as for Mussolini, well he is ridiculed beyond belief. It is clear that in writing the book De Berniere had a political agenda, but in
my mind this takes nothing away from a beautiful book that is pointing out obvious flaws in what are now failed political realities.

Historically, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin portrays the barbarity of war, the horrors that soldiers and citizens endured, during a period of the world’s history that I hope is never repeated. Is a soldier obeying an order, personally and morally responsible for their barbaric actions? What if that soldier, will be killed if they do not carry out the order? These horrific moral questions are raised more than once and the pawn like element of the infantry soldier is hard for us to contemplate. If you thought that human race was vile in what it could do to each other, this book will do nothing but reinforce that belief. De Berniere seems to despair of society when he says: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then again as tragedy.”

In part, you can view this book as semi-fiction, as real life events, are vividly portrayed, albeit from a slant.

On top of all this is the theme of changing values as different generations come and go.

This is a clever book, swinging in its narrative, between people’s personal lives and historical events, joy and despair. In fact, the whole range of human emotions is covered.

The writing is superb, moving from languid descriptive prose, to fast pace sharp prose to describe fast moving events. The book is never paced at the same speed, in some places village life seems to go on as normal and then, bang, everything happens at once. Parts of this book will break your heart as the emotion of death and loss are explored with moving language.

The only point I can really make in the negative about this book, is that certain parts of the love story are stereotypical, girl falls for charming occupier, to the scorn of the community. Except the fellow is not that bad really. The love story follows conventional lines and
well as for the ending, I am not sure whether it was appropriate for the book. But I may be being a sour puss.

This is a top recommendation, in part a charming, and funny book, based around an historical tale of true tragedy. This one tweaks the emotions and makes you think hard about our race. But beware, the book speeds on to a truly horrific climax to the war and will, I think cause some readers to feel vile.

As for the film, well according to reviews the plot is watered down to just the love story, the atrocities ignored and the ending re-written, I think it would be a disapointment.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a long book at 533 pages, it is £6.99, published by Vintage, but available at a discount on Amazon.

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