Captain Corelli's Mandolin

i've just finished Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières..

The story takes place in the Idyll Cellaphonia, a small Greek island that is still, in the years before World War II, touched with all the magic of Greek legend, and suffused with a light that is "as though straight from the imagination of God in His youngest days, when He still believed that all was good" [pp. 6-7]. There the elderly Dr. Iannis and his beautiful daughter, Pelagia, enjoy an idyllic existence, and at the age of seventeen Pelagia falls in love and becomes engaged to a handsome young fisherman, Mandras.

But in 1940 the Italians attack Greece, and the violent reality of the war disrupts the villagers' quiet lives and changes them forever. Mandras leaves Cephallonia to go to war, and upon Greece's defeat by the Axis the island is occupied by Mussolini's army. One of the Italian officers is billeted with Dr. Iannis: Antonio Corelli, a high-spirited and generous young man who plays the mandolin like an angel and inspires impromptu opera performances among his troops. Nominally an invader, an enemy to the Cephallonians, Corelli soon becomes a cherished member of their community and Pelagia inevitably becomes fascinated by him with all his promise of music, love, and joy.

The defeat of the Italian army at the hands of the Allied forces brings new traumas and dilemmas for Pelagia and Corelli, as the Germans rout their erstwhile Italian allies with a series of hair-raising murders and atrocities, and, after the armistice, Greece herself is plunged into a brutal civil war between Communist and royalist forces. Pelagia's optimism and love of life is challenged as she suffers dreadful losses, but her courage and tenacity sustain her, and finally her lifelong search for love does not go unrewarded.

what i like about the book is the way the author tells the story through different pespectives. We see the events unfolding through the eyes of Carlo,the courageous homosexual,Mandras,the malleable fisherman and the hauntingly beautiful Pelegia. Bernier's masterful strokes and vivid narrative allows the novel to transcend the mundane;to stand out among the greatest love stories of our time.Irony is redolent...it is present in its acerbic,bitter and comical guises.This imbues the novel with layers of complexity and the result is a balanced,intelligent work that vacillates between moments of child-like,innocent joy and painful sorrow.The lush socio-political commentary,including a chapter painting the cruel,decadent mind of Mussolini (written in stream of conciousness form) provide a stunning backdrop.

Strongly recommended.