BOOK REVIEW BY GEMMA

Book Title: Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Author: Louis de Bernieres

Publisher/Year: Penguin readers/1994

Book Type: part love story, part war story

Pages: 102

SUMMARY:

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set in the early days of the Second World War, before Mussolini invaded Greece. This is the story of a tiny Greek island called Cephallonia, occupied by the Italian army and the Greek population refusing to be dominated by its "conquerors".

Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephallonia, he has an extent medical knowledge adquired over years of experience although he hasn't a formal degree in Medicine. Dr Iannis is nonetheless respected in his small village. He has raised his daughter, Pelagia to become an intelligent and beautiful young woman. At the age of seventeen Pelagia falls in love to a handsome young fisherman called Mandras and they get engaged. There's going to be a war and Mandras has to fight in the war so, he asks Pelagia to wait to marry him until after he has returned from fighting in the Greek army against the Italians. Pelagia agrees and during his absence she writes hundreds of letters to Mandras but she never receives a reply so she begins to suspect he will never return.

The island is occupied by Italians. One of the italian officers is billted with Dr. Iannis, his name is Antonio Corelli, a high-spirited, handsome and generous young man who plays the mandolin like an angel. It isn't long before Captain Corelli and Pelagia fall in love despite her engagement to Mandras. They try to keep their love as a secret.

Meanwhile, the war contimues with brutal force upon the island. The defeat of the Italian army at the hands of the allied forces brings new problems for Pelagia and Corelli, as the Germans rout their erstwhile Italian allies with a series of murders and atrocities. Finally, death and sorrow replacing beauty of Cephallonia and Pelagia's optimism and youth is changed into sorrow.

OPINION:

From my point of view Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a book which deals important themes like faith, love, cowardice, death,... Undoubtedly Louis de Bernieres has proven here that he is a master in the art of transporting his readers in time and space and making them feel part of events that they cannot abandon until they read the last page. Therefore, the author wants to be equally critical against fascists and communists against all ideologies which try to impose the one and only truth about human coexistence. It is thus that the role of Greek communists who led the wartime resistance against the Italians and the British and American backed forces in the civil war, entangles with an antiwar epic and an unconsummated love triangle between Pelagia, Mandras and Captain Corelli.

LANGUAGE/STYLE:

The vocabulary of this book is not very difficult although the writer uses some unfamiliar words which come from Greek and Italian such as "Casa Nostra" the Italian word for our home,"Kapheneion" the Greek word for a village coffee shop, "Papakis" Greek word for Daddy, "Kyria" Greek for Mrs. or Miss, etc. that make difficult to understand the story. About the language of the author is quite simple, rich and easy to read. What the author tries is to show the readers the way of living of Greek people. Moreover, the text is packed with high-quality language that provokes specific imagery.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is historical and romantic story not too heavy on slang, but with enough cultural jargon. I think that the language fit well with the subject matter: love and war between people with different cultures. Besides, we can distinguish characteristic phrases or vocabulary of particular professions like doctor or soldier. The theme of the book is love and warm so the author uses abstract words like love, sorrow, beauty, patience, truth in order to explain the plot of the story.The writer uses specific words when he refers to Cephallonia and the main characters of the story. Moreover, he uses many adjectives and adverbs to describe places and people in the story so the readers feel closer to the story. Depending on the situation the writer uses nouns, adjectives and verbs with positive or negative connotation. Usually the sentences are quite short and simple. There aren't compound-complex structures, inverted syntaxes or rhetorical devices which could confuse the reader.