Captain Corelli's Mandolin: Louis De Bernieres

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Dionisis Georgatos - the elected governor of Cephalonia who negotiated carefully-framed terms for the Corelli film to be made on the island - dismisses de Bernières’s book as “reactionary and wrong”. Nobody, he says, wants to benefit from the film “if it distorts our history - we had many deaths, houses were burned, people hanged in the streets. It is very sensitive. De Bernières clearly used British sources from that time and, of course, they had the role of invaders.” Gerasimos Artelanis, mayor of Sami and, like Georgatos, a member of Greece’s ruling socialist party, Pasok, has threatened to take the film-makers to the International Court of Justice if they include de Bernières’s most controversial claims, thus breaking an undertaking not to inflame political and national sensitivities.

Even Podimatas’s record of persecution fails to match the experience of Vangelis Neochorotis, a 91-year-old Cephalonian veteran of both the resistance and the Greek-Italian war of 1940-1941, who spent 21 years in prison and whose brother was executed during the civil war. Both he and his brother, like thousands of others, refused an offer of release if they signed a statement renouncing communism. Sitting in the garden of the house in Paliki he has lived in since the 30s with his wife Amalia - herself a former EAM member who was tortured after the war - Neochorotis gives his view of the Corelli story: “De Bernières’s book is an insult to the whole Greek people. But I believe it is also part of a global drive to rewrite history, to reverse historical facts, to convince people that political and social change is a dead end and that if you struggle for a better world, it only leads to bloodshed, suffering and failure.” I saw this movie first years ago and decided to read the book for clarity on Carlos' role in the story which is quite vague in the movie. Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a historical fiction that encompasses symbolism, character development and evolving relationships with a look at WWII that is frequently overlooked, the disrupted but mundane lives of those touched by the war in less horrific ways than concentration camps and mass executions. An idyllic island home, a questioned saint and war touched lives that intermingle in touching relationships. I think part of the problem was that I was expecting something more than I got. It’s a competent enough novel, it was just a little too slow for me, and I do think it would have benefitted from a little extra editing. It’s not exactly supposed to be fast-paced in the first place, and there are some interesting bits of character development. There’s also a lot of talking, too much of it for my liking, and while there are plenty of references to goats throughout, I was expecting it to have some sort of payoff instead of just feeling like a wasted metaphor. EDIT: changed because my friends thought my analysis was a bit pretentious. Left it below for reference. Basically, Greek woman sleeps with Italian officer in the time of fascism. Goes about as well as you would expect.The Greek doctor Dr. Iannis attempts to write an impartial history of his island, Cephalonia. However, he finds he cannot do so without getting angry about the numerous Greek conquests, so he amends his title to read "A Personal History of Cephalonia." In the village, his daughter Pelagia falls in love with a young fisherman named Mandras. They get engaged in August on the feast day of St. Gerasimos, but Pelagia is unhappy about it. Dr. Iannis refuses to provide a dowry, suggests Mandras is too uneducated to appreciate Pelagia, and counsels that they should wait to get married until after the war. Dr. Iannis spends most of his time at the kapheneia with his friends Stamatis and Kokolios, who are royalist and communist respectively. Though they used to fight about politics, as the war moves towards Greece, the three band together for the sake of their country. Dr. Iannis also adopts a pine marten that the child Lemoni names Psipsina. I liked how little I knew about this book before I read it, so I won't say too much in the way of plot. The characters are delightful and complicated, and the glimpses you get of the non-main characters are intoxicating. De Bernieres provides priceless description and personification of non-humans, including various animal species, musical instruments, and countries. The book comments on politics in a thoughtful way, but doesn't oversimplify or beat you over the head with anything.

By the second chapter, I had the distinct impressions that this was one of those gems of a book that should not ever, ever, ever be made into a movie, ever. For perspective, I feel this way about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and do not feel it about Lord of the Rings. The problem with these "feelings" is that I won't ever be able to investigate them, because if I read a book like this I will categorically refuse to see the movie for fear of ruining the book, and if I see the movie first, I probably won't ever know.I should probably mention that I read this entirely based on http://www.thisonenext.com, and I am quite impressed. This book is absolutely me. Different voices find many forms. There are letters; there are political diatribes; there are speeches and sermons. Equally, the chapters of third-person narrative reflect many different viewpoints. Most often we see events through the eyes of Iannis, or Pelagia, or Corelli, but free indirect style gives us the thoughts of many others, from Mina, the mad girl who is to be "cured" by Saint Gerasimos, to Lieutenant Weber, the "good Nazi", confused by the habits of his Italian allies. The collection of narratives is made to enact an understanding of human variety.

i tell everyone that this is my most favourite-est book ever, and it's still true. i love the weaving of different narratives, and how every character had a soul, even the evil ones. the severity of the war contrasts so poignantly with the simplicity and good humour of everyday life. But of all de Bernières’s disparaging claims about the Cephalonian resistance, perhaps the most deeply resented by the island’s veterans is his insistence that the movement refused to come to the aid of the Italians when they turned on their former German allies at such terrible cost in the autumn of 1943. It is “certain”, the British soldier-turned-author declares in the novel, that the “communist andartes of ELAS took no part, seeing no reason to shake themselves out of their parasitic lethargy”. Later, he even has the heroine, Pelagia, hearing that the partisans have been “killing off” Italians who came to fight alongside them against the Germans. A pamphlet appears on Cephalonia one day that makes fun of Mussolini and all the ways in which he's hypocritical and absurd. Corelli isn't charmed, though Carlo and Dr. Iannis are. Pelagia suggests that given the syntax, the pamphlet could've been written by conspiring Greeks and Italians, but when she sees her father and Carlo's reaction to this, she thinks they're stupid. A few days later, Corelli wakes up with a hangover, argues with Pelagia about his role in the war, and begins to compose "Pelagia's March."

There is a plaque marking the spot where the five hanged, as there are monuments all over the island commemorating resistance fighters killed during the occupation or the civil war. In Zervata, in the mountains above Sami, a bust of the legendary Cephalonian ELAS commander, Astrapioannos, is the centrepiece of a garden of remembrance to the fallen partisans. Further up the mountainside, surrounded by caves and now inhabited only by goats and wild dogs, lie the ruins of the village of Mouzakata, his wartime guerilla hide-out - first bombed by the Germans, later by government forces with British support during the civil war, and finally abandoned after Cephalonia’s devastating 1953 earthquake. I had high hopes going into this one and I’m sad to say that it left me a little disappointed. de Bernieres’ writing style is excellent and the actual book felt almost poetic because of the way in which it was written. The problem is that it just dragged on and on, and while the characters were realistic and fully fleshed out, I just didn’t relate to them. Corelli begins to play mandolin for Pelagia and the two talk about their dreams for life after the war. Corelli wants to be a musician and for the first time, Pelagia voices her desire to be a doctor. Though Pelagia and Dr. Iannis continue to torment Corelli, Pelagia finds herself falling for him. She stares at him, touches him without thinking, and becomes gradually less angry with him. Dr. Iannis notices their budding romance and wonders what to do. On the feast day of St Gerasimos, patron saint of the Greek island of Cephalonia, the mummified remains of the holy man are paraded and the islanders become "outlandishly drunk". (The first detail from Louis de Bernières's Captain Corelli's Mandolin is confirmed by the Greek tourist board; the latter is the novelist's embellishment.) In the novel, troupes from different towns loudly strike up rival songs, some fishermen from Panago-poula miraculously managing, over the chatter of the crowd and the crashing of a cannon, to weave "a harmony intricate and polyphonic". "The brotherhood of the sea," declares the narrator, in imitation of the fishermen's bibulous self-congratulation, has produced "conclusive proof of their metaphysical unity". Dr. Iannis counsels Pelagia and Corelli in turn. He tells Pelagia to wait to marry Corelli until after the war, as that's the only way she'll know if their love is genuine. He tells Corelli that Pelagia has a dark and mysterious other side, as all Greeks do, and cautions him against making plans.