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...

Just below 3 stars. I previously read two other books by this author which I really enjoyed, but this one disappointed me. I didn't feel very connected to the characters and the book tried to cover too much. But worst of all was that there often was too much telling and too little showing, which made the book at times come across as a history lesson or summation of facts, instead of as enjoyable historical fiction.

I have been suffering from breast cancer and am unable to enjoy many of my usual hobbies, so I have been reading even more than usual. With that in mind, my friend Jill gave me The Thread by Victoria Hislop. She had really enjoyed it and so passed it on. I had never read any books by Hislop, but I had heard of her. She is an English author who was born in London, England in 1959 but was raised in Tonbridge, Kent, and attended Tonbridge Grammar School before she read English at St. Hilda’s Colleg...

Oh yes, this woman really LOVES Greece!!! That was on my mind while reading "The Thread"...Reminded me of my thoughts exactly when many years ago I was devouring "The Island"...It' s so obvious that Victoria Hislop has done an immense historical research about greek history before writing her books... That's why she can so thoroughly narrate big parts of it as a background of her plots. The action is captivating and easy to follow. Interesting stories well-spread over many decades.The Thread: hi...

I couldn't imagine there could be better book than The island or The return - but here it is.This is rich in every sense of the word.A real must-read!

I found this book a little long, the novel could have been 100 pages less and still done it justice.The descriptions of the city, surroundings, Greek life and the events during the war were great, the building of the characters, less so. Nevertheless an enjoyable read, which gives away the ending at the start, the reader is always trying to see how the plot will get these.

On the surface this melodramatic historical novel sounds appealing and interesting. When I heard the book was set in Thessaloniki (the town of my great grandmother) and that it dealt with Jewish and Sephardic heritage I was intrigued.However, after 50 pages or so, the book's weaknesses started to outperform its strengths. Hislop's writing is very mediocre. When she wants to compare something or show a contrasting situation she inevitably uses a simple metaphor to get the point across. The dialog...

a book about my city? definetely yeah!!!i totally loved this book!!!! I read it in 2 days (not on holidays) so now i really need a long hour sleep!!!! I had ages to be so completely into a book and living in agony for the characters, even though we knew the end of their story from the beginning. For someone coming from Thessaloniki and having an interest in its history, i think that this a perfect book!! Victoria Hislop did a great research and she said things as they were, from the point of vie...

I loved this book so much, I didn't want it to end.I'm not sure what the opinion of this book might be from the perspective of a Greek reader and/ or someone who knows Greece/ Thessaloniki well, and I'm not sure if Hislop has actually written a realistic story here that accurately describes the nuances of the city and its people.However, as I said, I absolutely adored it. It was a bit slow to get going but after a little while I was completely hooked and couldn't put it down.It was just beautifu...

The sweeping historical detail of this book carried me through the first third before something started to niggle. I just couldn't engage with the characters and their reactions to things constantly surprised me, as a reader I ofen find myself seeing and feeling through the eyes of a character, but with this book I stayed an outside observer. When I started to analyse what the probelm was, I realised that although the author is very good at the history part, when it comes to people she writes in...

The Thread - Victoria HislopKaterina Sarafoglou, a young seamstress with exceptional talent, creates beautiful gowns for the rich ladies of Thessaloniki in Greece, the passion for her work shining through as her needle threads its way through the fine silks and wools.Victoria Hislop's new novel, The Thread, weaves a story of love, family feuds, resilience and loss against a backdrop of the turbulent history of Greece, and, in particular, the northern city of Thessaloniki, throughout the 20th Cen...

I really enjoyed The Island, despite its flaws and I was hoping for a similarly good plot with The Thread, but I was pretty disappointed.The history of the novel was interesting, but it really dragged on and on in the last quarter of the book as there was no climactic scene like in The Island. On the face of it, the novel was fine but there were just too many problems with it for me to give it more than two stars. For a start all the characters were either good or bad, selfish or selfless. The p...

This book has expectations to be epic but the sad reality is that it looks like a book written by a tourist who wanted to stage some kind of story in a place she fancied. The result is a story that has little or no real connection with the place and the time; it could have been staged in Paris during the French revolution or in Moscow during the Bolshevik period. It would have made no difference to the development of the plot.It is absolutely packed with the tritest stereotypes in literature: th...

I really enjoyed The Thread, and am giving it five stars -- not because it is a literary treasure, but rather because it does such a good job at historical fiction. I learned so much about the history of Thessalonika and modern Greece in general, and enjoyed myself while reading.The story follows Katerina from being a Greek refugee child fleeing Turkey, to old age in northern Greece. Her life is intertwined with the widow who "adopts" and raises her, the wealthy Greek woman who lives temporarily...

Really enjoyed this - makes me want to visit Thessaloniki. No idea of the recent history of Greece.

5 STARS!SPOILERSReview originally posted on Aoibh Reads Starting in the early 1900's, The Thread follows a story set in Thessaloniki, Greece. As Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish Army, young Katerina is separated from her fleeing family and ends up under the care of Eugenia, a fleeing mother with her two older daughters. Here, Katerina befriends young Dimitri, son of a strong politically viewed power hungry man. Soon, the city is plunged into chaos of war and fear, as the Jews are pushed ou...

I was reluctant to ready this book. Why ? Well, I have read a lot of books about this era of Greek history, but other than Louis de Bernieres, never one written by a British author.My wife had bought me a copy for Christmas, and I had put it under the bed, dismissing it as a middle class British woman's attempt to imagine a subject she can't possibly know that well. But I picked it up again when people started talking to me about it. I was wrong and I am glad I persevered. Hislop knows Greece we...

I read Hislop's latest around X-mas, in the quiet of the night. Very promising at first, but the novel is so plot-driven it is infuriating. No character development, many inconsistencies in the plot, some bad Greek (she should have asked her Greek friends to proofread). I kept reading because the main part of the plot happens during World War II in Thessaloniki, my home town, and that was such a dramatic time for the city. To be fair her descriptions are good and memorable. But the book could ha...

Beautifully told tale of harsh circumstances. Hislop has, very obviously, done her research into the history of Europe, of Greece and its relationship with Turkey, of Symia and Thessaloniki and has woven this story through that history.Nobody should think, before reading this book, that the telling of the story of the people in the narrative comes second to the history of the area, as the characters have been richly drawn and are the backbone of the book – in other words we want to know what hap...

A sprawling epic spanning both world wars, the Thread works better as historical reference than fiction: the characters are still born, rendered lifeless and unengaging, with the true centre piece being Thessaloniki, a vibrant city full of colour and pizzaz which subtly evolves throughout the 20 century.The plethora of characters: Dimitri, Olga, Eugenia, Leonides and Katerina seem to share equal air time and thus we have no 'mains' here. Regretably, this serves to reduce the whole ensemble to se...