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What a delight to read those short stories by Victoria Hislop. As in her novels, you can feel her love for Greece and its people and that's what makes her stories so beautiful. Always a pleasure to read!
2.5 stars
Easy to read and fabulously written in true Hislop style. I wanted the stories to carry on
Short stories are (IMHO) tricky territory. I think that Hislop has done a good job here though. There was enough depth of character crafted to allow me to empathise with the characters or to feel some other emotion towards them. The fact that they were set in Greece was always going to be a winner with me!
As always with her novels I've been transported back to Greece and Athens. Thoroughly recommend
This was my first experience reading anything by Victoria Hislop and I enjoyed her collection of short stories. Each showed a different side of Greek culture, and the messages were informative of life living there. The tone was quite melancholy on occasions, but I flew through this quick read. I would be interested to read more from the author.
This was ludicrously bad. I've not read anything quite so terrible in a long while. It's not just that the characters were one-dimensional and the writing painfully bad ("The buildings were warmly characterful") but that the stories were, to put it simply, pointless. Writing short stories is an art. You have to set the scene, describe the characters, and tell a tale -- all within a limited word count. Some authors rise to this challenge. Victoria Hislop didn't.The banality of her stories can be
A collection of short stories that each of them gives us a picture of life in Greece. They all have a relaxed mood, like a Greek summer afternoon, maybe better read on a small table like the one on the cover of the version in front of me. But this does not mean that all of them do not have something to say to the reader and this is definitely a very good combination.Μία συλλογή μικρών διηγημάτων που κάθε ένα από αυτά μας δίνει μία εικόνα της ζωής στην Ελλάδα. Όλα τους έχουν μία χαλαρή διάθεση, σ...
Disappointingly boring. I don't think short stories are the author's strong point... every time something was about to start happening, the story immediately ended, so every story was dull and ended too abruptly. ("Once upon a time, some totally Greek people were in Greece. They did nothing for a while. Then something happened! They felt conflicted about the thing that had happened. The end.")I read this because my mother and sister both said her novel The Island was great, so perhaps Victoria H...
an okay collection. I could totally get the Greek vibes yes, however when it comes to the stories they are not really worth it. Too simple and the endings were rather anticlimactic.
Wonderful read, very vivid description of greek life and values.A couple of short stories.Usually not a short story fan I received this book in a book exchange and have basically only started reading it cause it was small and good as a travel book. It was surprisingly lovely and covers political problems as well as everyday life in Greece.I enjoyed it massively.
These short stories give an excellent idea of what life is like in Greece. Having visited the mainland and islands extensively, I can easily identify with the descriptions of the characters, their houses, the shops, the Kafenion. However, the stories were a bit minimalistic, when I came to the end, I was surprised at the way in which many of them finished. They seemed unfinished. Nothing had happened. They didn’t make me gasp, I wasn’t surprised by anything, rather disappointing.