Some books have memorable openings, none more so than Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
”Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.”
It was Louis de Bernières’ third novel when it came out in 1994 and by far his best. Fortunately my 40th birthday was in 1994 and I was given a first edition (above) with an enchanting inscription: “Christopher – this novel should provide those of us intimate with the Greek islands something sufficiently demanding to read with the third gin … “
As I write I’m on my second gin. There is a literary trope that novels set in Greece must adhere to. “Landscapes like this on such days, advance men immeasurably. Perhaps Ancient Greece was only the effect of a landscape and a light on a sensitive people.” Written in 1994 but not by Louis de B – by John Fowles in Behind the Magus. Louis’s sentiments are similar.
”It is a light that seems unmeditated either by the air or by the stratosphere. It is completely virgin, it produces overwhelming clarity of focus, it has heroic strength and brilliance. It exposes colours in their original prelapsarian state, as though straight from the imagination of God … “
Words he ascribes to Dr Iannis, struggling to begin The New History of Cephalonia and tinkering with other tropes until his daughter’s goat eats his manuscript, left unattended when the doctor pops out to the garden to pee on the mint. “He nitrogenated the herbs in strict rotation, and tomorrow it would be the turn of the oregano.”
I’m looking forward to re-reading a book that has become a classic. As I remember, its chiaroscuro is as varied as the Aegean in the sun and in blue velvet nights.
Love this book and also the film that followed it.
I am hugely looking forward to revisiting his island at the end of this month.
How’s Bertie?
Bertie’s a hot dog!
Not quite sure what content my comment should have, so am simplifying matters by leaving it open!
Christopher, I agree that it is a splendid read and beautifully written, but it did take me 50 pages to really get into the story, as it were. I commend his book ‘Birds Without Wings’ which is a charming and well researched book about two young children, one Turkish; one Greek, on the ve of the war in the Dardenelles.
Yes, it took me a while to get into it in 1994. Now I’m enjoying the way it is told through different eyes; a trope possibly invented by Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone published in 1868.
I was thinking about Bertie last night and wondering how he was coping in this heat. Like his owners I’m sure he’s finding it very exhausting!!
There is current talk of good books ruined by the movie version. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin