Why I Love Music by Victoria Hislop

Today I am thrilled to welcome Victoria Hislop to Historical Tapestry. This year I have read two of Ms Hislop's books and thoroughly enjoyed them! (You can read my review of The Thread here). I have one left to read, and I hope to get to that one soon, and then I will be waiting impatiently for each new book!

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Most of my writing is set in Mediterranean countries. I have never lived in either Greece or Spain, I have just been a visitor (though I do have a house in Crete now, so I suppose that makes me more of an insider). One of the things I am often asked is whether it is difficult to write novels set in places where I have never lived full-time and where I have no family roots. How, people ask, do you take your imagination into a period, or a foreign place? A period that you have never lived in, or a place that is still, after all, alien to you?

My answer is simple: music. For me, music is the closest I can get to traveling in time or space. Music sounds the same wherever you are. It’s not, for example, like a bottle of rose wine from Provence. Perfectly chilled and consumed on a summer’s evening in the South of France, it tastes perfect. Bring it home to the UK and it changes completely. It’s all wrong: not at all as you remember it and undeniably disappointing. Music, by contrast, travels and it helps the listener travel too. It sounds the same wherever you are.

When I began to write The Thread, I explored the style of music which developed during the period of my story, which begins in the 1920’s - rebetika. This is a very distinctive style that fuses Asia Minor and Greek sounds, and was the music that defined the mood and the character of the decades I was writing about, encapsulating the suffering, nostalgia and loss that so many people suffered.

In the first few decades of the 20th century, more than a million refugees arrived in Greece from Asia Minor, bringing with them their music and lyrics that would be combined with the existing sounds of Greece. For whole chapters, while I was writing, I would be listening over and over again to the music that somehow reflected the traumas that my characters were experiencing. It helped me a great deal when I was trying to imagine their emotional state.

For me the music of Greece, both traditional and modern, is quintessentially Greek. It is totally distinctive. There may have been external influences, but when I listen to the music of Manos Xatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis or the voices of Glykeria, Xaris Alexiou, Giannis Parios, or the late Dimitris Mitropanis, I am immediately transported.


When I am in Crete during the summer, I go to as many musical events as I can find to drink in the sound of Greek music. Even a small village will put on a celebration at least once during the summer and at the centre of it there will usually be a quartet of musicians - generally a lyra (a small, three stringed instrument played with a bow), a bouzouki, a lute and sometimes a baglama (a tiny bouzouki). One of the instrumentalists will also sing traditional songs and there will always be dancing - small children, teenagers and adults (right up into their nineties) will dance together some often very complex steps.

Music is never just incidental in Greece, it is always at the centre of any communal activity and I have often found the atmosphere it creates immensely inspirational. And when I take CDs home in my suitcase, I find it travels far better than the local wine!


You can find out more about Victoria Hislop and her books at her website (www.victoriahislop.com) or on Twitter where she is @VicHislop

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