The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power

When Calliope Brown's Uncle Nestor dies, he leaves her all of his personal belongings - his papers, photos, some cash and the things that he has collected over the years. In order to collect her inheritance Calliope must travel back to Patras, and sort through them. She hasn't been back to Patras for quite a few years and she is eventually convinced that she should return, albeit reluctantly.

What is clear from the beginning is that Calliope's mother Clio doesn't want her daughter to come back to sort through Nestor's belongings. And once Calliope is there, Clio does her best to put roadblocks in her way. It is just as clear that there is something that Nestor wanted Calliope to know, and, whatever it is, the secrets are to be found in the belongings that he has left to Calliope. But what could he be trying to tell Calliope through the old photos, letters and other knickknacks. Whatever it is, it is to do with Clio and the past, something that the two siblings were fighting about even on his deathbed.

This visit also gives Calliope the chance to find out a little more about her family's past. Once, they were a well to do family who lived in a beautiful house and had a farm, and now they don't. It's all just gone. Once, the Notaris family was well known on the island, but now they are just another family and Clio doesn't know how it was that they lost everything.

There was a lot to like about this novel. I really liked the contrast between the current time and the past Calliope happens to be visiting Patras during Carnivale, a time of parades, of partying especially the Bourbouli dances where the men all dressed up in their finery and the women all wore masks and cloaks to "hide" their identities, of feasting, and most importantly of family gatherings. When compared to the austerity of a town under occupation during World War II, initially by the Italians and then by the Germans, the contrast was marked. The author had me wanting to visit Patras during Carnivale, to see the colour and the pageantry for myself, and I liked how she showed some of the progress that was being made to modernise. It is interesting to note that the modern part of the story was set in 2000, so just before all the economic difficulties that have really affected Greece over the last few years.

There were also some beautifully imagined scenes included. For example, I had never heard of clover houses before, but the way they were described sounded like perfect places for the young Notaris children to play, and the scene where Clio's mother created butterfly wings out of the parachute of a fallen Italian airman was beautifully written.

One of the things that may be harder for a reader to connect with is the characters. Calliope's relationship with her mother could only be described as difficult. Clio is clearly an unhappy woman. When she married Calliope's father and moved to America, she was desperately unhappy and the marriage was volatile. Even after returning to live in Greece, Clio was still somewhat estranged from her brother and sisters. She was included in family events but always on the periphery, never fully embraced in the same way as her sisters were, and it all goes back to the events of the past.

Whilst it would be easy to blame Clio for all the difficulties in the mother-daughter relationship, it is also clear that Calliope has many issues of her own. They initially stem from her unhappy childhood, from that feeling of distance that she has from her mother, of being unloved. During her childhood, the best parts were the summers that she spent staying in Greece. There she knew that she was loved by her aunts, and especially by her uncle,  and by her cousin. But as an adult Calliope struggles to draw people in, and that's when she is not actively pushing people away! Her fiance, Jonah, wants to visit Greece with her, but Calliope is not at all convinced that he loves her enough to stick around so won't even tell her family about him, but then it is things that Calliope does that sabotages the relationship, things that make it difficult to fully respect Calliope as a character.

As a grown woman who has a difficult relationship with the difficult woman that is my mother, I could relate to a lot of the feelings that Calliope expressed. Despite being a grown up, despite knowing what she is like and knowing what to expect, that doesn't stop it from being disappointing when yet again she doesn't act or react in the way that you believe a normal parent should. I think I could particularly relate as my mother arrives in town for a couple of days this week and so I could absolutely relate to the way that Calliope viewed their interactions with a sense of duty rather then the excitement of seeing her mother.

The story is split between modern and WWII narrative with it probably being about a 60/40 split. I do like the dual narrative being used as a tool to tell this kind of story. The writing was smooth, and I found it easy to fall into the pages of the story and stay there and as a result it was quite a fast read.

Whilst not perfect, I did enjoy this book a lot, and I hope to read more from the author in the future.

Rating 4/5

Tour Details

Link to Tour Schedule: http://tlcbooktours.com/2013/01/henriette-lazaridis-power-author-of-the-clover-house-on-tour-april-2013/
The Clover House on Amazon
Henriette Lazaridis Power's website
Henriette Lazaridis Power on Twitter
Henriette Lazaridis Power on Facebook

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key,this stunning debut novel brings to life World War II-era and modern-day Greece—and tells the story of a vibrant family and the tragic secret kept hidden for generations.

Boston, 2000: Calliope Notaris Brown receives a shocking phone call. Her beloved uncle Nestor has passed away, and now Callie must fly to Patras, Greece, to claim her inheritance. Callie’s mother, Clio—with whom Callie has always had a difficult relationship—tries to convince her not to make the trip. Unsettled by her mother’s strange behavior, and uneasy about her own recent engagement, Callie decides to escape Boston for the city of her childhood summers. After arriving at the heady peak of Carnival, Callie begins to piece together what her mother has been trying to hide. Among Nestor’s belongings, she uncovers clues to a long-kept secret that will alter everything she knows about her mother’s past and about her own future.

Greece, 1940: Growing up in Patras in a prosperous family, Clio Notaris and her siblings feel immune to the oncoming effects of World War II, yet the Italian occupation throws their privileged lives into turmoil. Summers in the country once spent idling in the clover fields are marked by air-raid drills; the celebration of Carnival, with its elaborate masquerade parties, is observed at home with costumes made from soldiers’ leftover silk parachutes. And as the war escalates, the events of one fateful evening will upend Clio’s future forever.
A moving novel of the search for identity, the challenges of love, and the shared history that defines a family, The Clover House is a powerful debut from a distinctive and talented new writer.

Henriette Lazaridis Power on Why I Love Photography

Today I am pleased to welcome Henriette Lazaridis Power to Historical Tapestry as part of her blog tour with TLC Booktours. The tour will be visiting us again in a couple of weeks when I will be reviewing the book.

Henriette's book, The Clover House, is set in Greece during WWII. I can't tell you how thrilled I am that Henriette has chosen to share not only her passion for photography but also the photos that her father took that she references throughout the post!

Welcome Henriette and thank you for sharing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of my favorite experiences with my father came in the summer of 1974 when he and I were on our way to Greece for our yearly visit to family. Instead of flying directly to join my mother in Athens, we began in London and took a combination of trains and cars to reach Rome, flying the final leg from there across the Adriatic. Like many fourteen-year-olds, I had no particular desire to spend time with my father--or with either parent, really--but he and I had a good trip. And the reason for it was photography.


That summer, I had had my first non-babysitting job, as a camp counselor. Feeling flush with the lump-sum salary payment rather than the small instalments I got at my babysitting rate, I bought one object to mark my entry into the ranks of the gainfully though seasonally employed: a Canon FTb with the basic 35mm lens. There was nothing refined about the FTb. It seemed to have been carved from a solid block of metal, adorned with only the most essential knobs and dials. Shutter speed. Aperture. ASA. And a fold-out crank to rewind the film. The lens was among the sharpest I have ever known, and its aperture ring turned with a satisfying soft click. As for the shutter, that resounded like a rifle shot. Though simple like the Leica, the FTb lacked the subtlety and stealth of its German counterpart.

But I loved my FTb, and I still do. I love that it has a dent on its upper-right-hand corner from some tumble from a backpack after college. And I love that its base is adorned with a Dymo label bearing my name. Henriette Lazaridis. The camera has known me and I it since before I became an adult.

These days, I pull the FTb off the shelf on a regular basis, choosing it over my newer, digital cameras. And here’s why. The FTb fits my hands perfectly, and when I look through the lens, I know immediately whether my exposure will be right. Not because of any numbers or green or red lights, but because of a thin wand and a circle. When they intersect, my exposure is good. Like all brilliant systems, this one is intuitive and simple. It makes me happy just to use it. And when I see the results, I’m happy again to see the clear contrast in the black and white film I favor and the sharp focus of the image.

But more than that, when I press the shutter, I have a kind of combined muscle and heart memory of my father--a memory I treasure. Shooting with the FTb connects me to him and to that summer when he taught me the lessons I think of still. He would stand by me as I took a photo, ask me how I’d framed it, and then explain how I could have made it better. In Montmartre, at the Duomo, or the Colosseum, he let me make my mistakes and then gently showed me how to fix them. Under his tutelage, my successes were all my own.

Photography was an important part of my father’s life. As a young man in Greece, he taught himself about exposures, film, and filters by reading German technical manuals, and by staging elaborate light experiments with his friends. He labeled most of his prints on the back with the aperture, speed, filter, and film he had used, all in neat roman-alphabet hand. I have his photographs in boxes and albums and envelopes now. Each stiff-paper print is a record of his attempt to perfect his craft.

Together, the images form a record of life during a time of great upheaval. One of my prized prints among the many I have from my father is the one from 1942 that shows a group of three boys in shorts and sandals. One of them is painting a slogan on a wall while the others watch. The slogan reads “Hitler is a”. To paint those words was a dangerous act. To photograph them almost as dangerous.

Other photos my father took show German tanks rolling through the streets of Athens in April of 1941, taken from inside his jacket to keep him from being hauled off by the invading army.

And finally, there is the blurry, tilted shot of a paratrooper on the shoulders of jubilant Greeks. My father was there when the first British paratroopers landed to liberate Athens. As he would do the rest of his life, he had shouldered his camera and marched into drama, or chaos, or trouble, not away from it.

Throughout my childhood, I leafed through these photos, trying to imagine what it was like to live in a city under foreign occupation. Eventually, I would study these prints to understand how he had come to achieve the contrast, the composition, the light. But first and foremost, my father’s photographs were a window onto a life I wanted to capture in some way. My mother’s photographs, too, gave me a view into the past. While my father was the photographer, my mother was the subject, along with her cousins and her brother. Images from her collection showed her and the other children during childhood and youth in the city of Patras, in the midst of various adventures--skiing, hiking, riding bicycles, swimming or diving--or playing in the fields around their family farm.


As an only child, I consider it my obligation to hold the information behind all these photographs and to pass it on to my children, so that they can recognize the relatives whose faces swim up at them from the black and whites that are part of their heritage. Photography, too, is part of their heritage. When my son marches off into a foreign city and brings back images caught from close up, without timidity and with the keen perception of the street photographer; or when my daughter stops to capture the vivid colors of a fleeting moment--then I know that my children have inherited their grandfather’s gift. And by gift, I don’t even mean talent, but the simple fact that he gave them, as he did me, this way of investigating the world.

When I sat down to write The Clover House, about a young woman’s search for the truth behind her mother’s experiences in wartime Greece, these were the images I dug through, both in boxes and in my memory. But it’s more than just this particular narrative that derives from my love of photography. I actually think of narrative in the first place as essentially photographic. I tend to see a novel as a series of pictures. Scenes or episodes are, for me, visual moments, like snapshots glimpsed one after the other. As I write, I picture the moment first, and then I more or less write what I see. When I revise, I often turn to film for guidance, looking to the structure of a movie as a model for my work, or taking the camera’s movement in a film as a parallel for the point of view I want the writing to adopt. Recently, as I revised another novel manuscript, I wrestled with the idea of changing the point of view. I couldn’t figure out what would work best--close third person? omniscient?--until I remembered a scene from Joe Wright’s Atonement. I took the movement of his camera as the model for my narrator’s stance. It doesn’t surprise me that I turned for narrative inspiration not to McEwan’s novel, which I admire intensely, but to Wright’s film.


I envy the screenwriters. I think my ideal way to write a novel would be to find some way to shoot photographs to represent each moment in the story. Then I would array these photographs on the floor and arrange them to form the narrative arc I needed. And from there, I would write the novel, creating in words the imagined photography exhibit of my invented world. The truth is that I’ve adopted a revision habit that enables me to do the next best thing. Once a manuscript is complete, I write the scenes on index cards, one by one. I force myself to write just the bare minimum of information on each card, to make them quick glimpses of the story, like backyards observed from a train. I spread the cards around on the floor or on a big table, rearranging until I have the right narrative sequence. These index cards are my photographs now, I suppose. They give me a way to return to the tactile, physical, loud-clicking, shutter-snapping world of my FTb and photography, where I first learned to tell a story.

Tour Details

Link to Tour Schedule: http://tlcbooktours.com/2013/01/henriette-lazaridis-power-author-of-the-clover-house-on-tour-april-2013/
The Clover House on Amazon
Henriette Lazaridis Power's website
Henriette Lazaridis Power on Twitter
Henriette Lazaridis Power on Facebook

Captive of the Sun by Irena Karafilly

I can't remember reading a lot of historical fiction set in Greece during WWII until last year when I read and thoroughly enjoyed Victoria Hislop's books The Thread and The Island. This year I know I have at least one more book with this setting coming my way soon, and I finished reading The Captive Sun by Irena Karafilly.

The Captive Sun was a bestseller in Greece, something which fascinates me as I often wonder how certain events are portrayed in their native countries compared to the portrayal that we get from the usual British/American perspectives!

I enjoyed writing a discussion style review of the book with Lauren from Australian Bookshelf. You can read the first half of the review at Lauren's blog and the second part at my own blog!

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a fire sweeps through the thriving multicultural city, where Christians, Jews and Moslems live side by side. It is the first of many catastrophic events that will change for ever this city, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people. Five years later, young Katerina escapes to Greece when her home in Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she finds herself on a boat to an unknown destination. From that day the lives of Dimitri and Katerina become entwined, with each other and with the story of the city itself.

Thessaloniki, 2007. A young Anglo-Greek hears the life story of his grandparents for the first time and realises he has a decision to make. For many decades, they have looked after the memories and treasures of people who have been forcibly driven from their beloved city. Should he become their new custodian? Should he stay or should he go?

A few months ago I read this author's debut novel, The Island, and really loved it! Like that first book, this one is set in Greece, this time in the coastal city of Thessaloniki. It is a city that I knew very little about. Probably the only thing that came to mind was that there were a couple of letters to the Thessalonians in the New Testament of the Bible. What that tells us is that there is a long and rich history of the city, so it was probably wise of the author to concentrate pretty much on the events of the 20th century.

When the main part of the novel opens, it is 1917 and the city is populated by a roughly equal mix of Muslims, Jews and Greeks and for the most part the different groups living peacefully together. This is especially true on Irini Street where families live together in harmony, children playing together on the street, everyone close to each other.

The book is primarily the story of Dimitri Komninos and his wife Katerina, how they met and came together. It is fitting then that the novel opens on the day of Dimitri's birth, the much longed for son of Olga and Konstantinos. Konstantinos is a successful businessman and Olga his much younger trophy wife. We learn pretty early on what kind of man Konstantinos is and where his priorities lie. The baby's birth is a spot of good news in an otherwise terrible day for the city as this is the same day that most of the old city is destroyed by a devastating fire but rather than giving his family the priority for Konstantinos it is all about his business. With their home destroyed, Olga moves to Irini Street, much to her husband's disgust.

On another devastating day in another city, a young girl finds herself also fleeing from a fire that is destroying lives. In this case, the city is Smyrna in Turkey and the fire is precipitated by the terror of the Greco-Turkey war that was raging (an event that I had previously read about in Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides). As part of the agreements of that war, there was to be a swap of people. All the Muslims who lived in Thessaloniki were ordered to leave the city, and all of the ethnic Greeks who lived in Turkey were relocated back to Greece, with many thousands of them finding their way to Thessaloniki, a city that was ill prepared for such a population explosion.

In the chaos of the people swap, a young girl is separated from her mother who is destined to Athens. Suffering from a large burn on her arm, Katerina is taken care of by Eugenia and finds herself loaded onto a boat to Thessaloniki with Eugenia and her twin daughters, and soon they too live in Irini Street, and so they initial relationship between Dimitri and Katerina begins. As they grow towards adulthood, Dimitri has to fight his domineering father about his future career choice, and then ends up having to fight for his beliefs, and Katerina finds her passion in life - needlework. Soon she is one of the most sought after seamstresses in the city, and there is a lot of page time spent on the various skills she possesses and the garments that she helps to make.

One of the effects of the people swap is that the city goes from being one that was populated by roughly equal mix of religious beliefs to one where the Jewish are the minority and the Muslims are gone. Whilst there is no immediate effect, it is definitely felt as the events in world history march unerringly on towards the Nazi occupation of Greece, with inevitable consequences. Even when the war is over, there is still civil upheaval as the damaged country tries to find its way out of the dark days of World War II and into the future.

It is interesting to follow our main couple through these various upheavals, and see the consequences of their actions and beliefs, especially to see how some of those consequences had life long impacts on the choices that were available to them.

I really enjoyed getting to see this particular glimpse of Greek history, although I did have a couple of reservations. There were a couple of two dimensional characters, especially Konstantinos. I also wasn't sure about the use of the modern framing device. The novel opens with their grandson coming to visit an elderly Dimitri and Katerina, and for the first time hearing their story; how they met, what they went through, how they came together and more. Whilst I do normally like that kind of framework, this time it didn't quite work for me. I did also feel that the story kind of meandered a bit as it got towards the end, but this is really a minor complaint.

I still have Victoria Hislop's second book, The Return, here to read. That one is set in the Spanish Civil War. Whilst I am interested to read that one, it is clear that Hislop has a passionate interest in Greece and its people and history. It is interesting to note that as an author she is hugely popular in Greece. The Island was even made into a 26 part TV series! I hope to hear that her next book is once again set in Greece.

Rating 4/5

Bull God by Roberta Gellis

MOMMA DOESN'T TALK ABOUT THAT PARTY...


When gods still walked the Earth, a king could pray for a sign and have a white bull rise from the sea to confirm his claim to the throne. But a god's price was high, and when Minos did not keep his promise to the god Poseidon, the god meddled with Minos' wife...and the Minotaur, a child with the head of a bull, was born. The question is, did Poseidon intend his son to be worshiped as a new god, or is he the god's curse on Knossos, a monster that will destroy it?

Ariadne was the Minotaur's half-sister, the only one who would touch him and care for him when he was born. She was also high priestess of Dionysus, sworn to interpret his Visions, but one Vision destroys her peace. Dionysus Sees that the bull-head must die or bring disaster upon the realm. Can Ariadne agree to the slaughter of the deformed half-brother who clings to her as the only one who cares for him? Can she protect the Minotaur in defiance of Dionysus' vision and dare the god's wrath? Should she?

I must confess that I was a bit wary of reading books based in the Greek myths. Having studied them in the past I was afraid of finding the use of the Olympian Gods totally out of place and something akin to sacrilege. I'm happy to say that, once again, Gellis totally superated my expectations and created a tale that not only does justice to the them but that so engaged me that I cried buckets for the last 50 pages.

This is the Minotaur story with a twist, Gellis grabs the basic facts -  what lead to the Minotaur's birth, his sisters Ariadne and Phaidra and both their relationship with Theseus, the labyrinth, King Minos - and writes a powerful story that while maintaining the same facts tells something else entirely.

Ariadne is the highpriestess of the God Dyonisus. After a long spell during which the God had not answered the call of the highpriestess of Knossos he cames again when Ariadne is chosen for the role and calls him. She serves him and interprets his visions when need be. She is just a child in the beginning, a child that clearly adores him, and Dyonisus keeps their relationship strictly platonic despite the fact that tradition says that the God must couple with the highpriestess to bless the vines. One of his visions is about Ariadne half brother but despite being a tale of destruction she can't make herself destroy him.

As Ariadne grows up she must stay true to the God she worships and fight agains her parents who want her to worship the new God Minotaur. It is ironic that she is the only one who can control him. She is the one who raised him from birth, and the only one who truly cares or pity's him. The Minotaur, the child with the bull's head, is more than just a monster in this story, he is a pathetic victim of his mother's ambition and Poseidon's revenge on the humans.

Gellis characterization is one of her strong points, in presenting us with this set of characters and making us get to know them and feel for them she has written a wonderful story about the Olympian Gods. I loved how Dionysus explained the other Gods and himself to Ariadne and the love and compassion at the root of this tale. I can't wait to continue with this series and see which other gods have had their myths retold.

Grade: 4.5/5