Victoria Hislop's follow-up to The Island (The Return - Victoria Hislop)

Member Name: cerys82

Product:	The Return - Victoria Hislop
Date:	30/08/09 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sonia is a well rounded character

Disadvantages: overlong, unengaging

I have to be the only book fan left in the UK who hasn't read Hislop's first book "The Island", which was popularised by Richard and Judy's book club a couple of years back. However, I thought I would give this book a go.

It is now on paperback and available on Amazon for £3.86.

The book starts in the present day. Sonia is unhappily married to a stuffy, unsympathetic but successful man. She discovers a passion for flamenco and goes to Granada with bohemian childhood friend Maggie. She becomes seduced by the dance and the culture and begins a conversation with a cafe owner about the history of the cafe owners.

The current cafe owner tells her about a family that used to own it prior to the Spanish Civil War and begins to tell their story. From there the novel changes tack and is told as though the Civil War is in the present. The reader is shown a family torn apart by prejudice, violence, political difference and love as each family member goes on their own quest for righteousness and survival. In particular we follow a young woman called Mercedes who is an accomplished flamenco dancer and leaves to track down a guitar player who she believes to be the love of her life.

What follows is an epic quest for survival against the background of violence, political instablility and poverty from which it appears no-one is safe and Mercedes family is just as affected as everyone else.

I found the initial present day stuff to be quite convincing and engaging. Sonia becomes a well-rounded and sympathetic character. However the Civil War story which takes up the vast majority of the book is ultimately unconvincing and sadly uninteresting. The misery and deprivation of the characters itself is well written, but it is difficult to invest in them and ultimately it all just becomes a bit relentless without really having much to say.

The writing is quite simplistic in that the language is not overdescriptive, which is a blessing because it is overlong as it is.

It just doesn't seem to know what it is, whether its a love story, an epic, a war story, or a fictional story based in real life historic context. Ultimately I stuck with it to the end but lost interest long before that. Its a shame that I wasn't really engaged as the Spanish Civil War is a part of European history that I do not know very much about.

Ultimately, I found this a dull, disappointing read given Hislop's track record.

Summary: I will not be Returning