Better than the film! (Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres)

Member Name: west_jenn

Product:	Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Date:	10/08/03 (215 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: emotive, gret story

Disadvantages: not keen on the ending

I've seen the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin and wasn't overly impressed. It was ok in a bit of a syrupy way, but it didn't have much going for it except stunning scenery and a predictable love story.

People have said that the book is so much better than the film, which is often the case with films adapted from the book. After seeing the book at my local library I decided to give it a try.

It is an extremely good book and the film didn't come close to it's range and subtlety. Most of the book is set on the Greek Island of Cephallonia during the war years. I found the book quite hard to get into at first, but was really glad that I perserved. The story leaps around until you get used to the huge leaps in direction. For example the first chapter was set in Cephallonia and the second chapter gets inside Mussolini?' head and chronicles a rather odd episode from a day in 1940.

It did seem that the author had gone off at an alarming tangent. These two chapters highlight two themes that run through the book, the political events that led to the Greek experience of World war 2 and the personal lifes of Greeks and Italians caught up in the Italian occupation of Cephallonia.

Pelagia is a 17 year old girl who lives with her father Iannis, the local Cephallonia doctor. Louis paints an atmospheric picture of life on Cephallonia in the year leading up to the occupation. The inhabitants are lively and quirky with their fair share of eccentrics. Louis's description of the island makes it sound like a beautiful place. Tradition and religion are very important, religious festivals are celebrated and the local priest giving much more respect than his gluttonous alcoholism deserves.

Since the death of her mother when she was little, Iannis has brought pelagia up to be educated especially by the island's standards. In the summer of 1940 Pelagia is young and healthy and filled with adolescent angst abou
t whether her suitor, Mandras will propose.

The sun starts to set on the rather sunny beginning of the book when Mandras goes of to fight the Italians, who have invaded Greece. Other themes are introduced into the book, we meet the super strong homosexual Italian and hear about the dreadful suffering of the Italian soldiers who were being beaten by Greece up until the point when Germany came and helped them.

Life gets hard for the characters in the book. Mandras returns from fighting a different person and goes of the join the Greek resistance. The Italians invade Cephallonia striking fear into the local population.

Captain Antonio Corelli is a young officer posted to Cephallonia who is billeted into the doctor's house. He has an intense love of music and of course a mandolin, hence the title. He is a relaxed kind of soldier who wants an easy war and thinks he?s found it when he gets to Cephallonia. At first he is ostracised by Pelagia and her father whose patriotism won't allow them to be nice to him.

Pelagia finds herself attracted to him and fights against this as she is still officially engaged to Mandras and Corelli is supposed to be her enemy. Meanwhile Mandras has joined a communist resistance group who seem to spend most of their time fanatically fighting other communist resistance groups. This was an interesting part of the book as I know very little about Greece's part in the war or the civil war directly after world war two that was between communist groups and monarchists.

In Captain Corelli's mandolin you get a picture of how ordinary people on all sides are caught up in wars they don't always understand or want. The suffering and indecision of all sides is shown. The love story between Corelli and Pelagia shows that sometimes situations aren't as straightforward as good and bad people.

I won't give away too much more of the plot. I'll just say that the story gets
very sad and savage in places and really puts the love between Pelagia and Corelli to the test. Louis De Berniers writing style quickly goes from being serious and sad to humorous. In fact there are some very funny, touching bits in a story that is very tragic in places. The one thing I wasn't keen on was the ending , but I won't say more than that!

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