The story takes place on the Greek island of Cephalonia, which is on the west coast of Greece, during the days of World War II. Italy attempts to invade and conquer Greece, but fails. Germany then marches through Greece and hands parts of it to Italy to occupy. Part of Italy's portion is the island of Cephalonia.
The main characters in the book are the Greek doctor Iannis, his daughter Pelagia, the Italian army captain Antonio Corelli, and another Italian army soldier, Carlo. The story line involves Corelli living in the Iannis house, with Corelli and Pelagia gradually falling in love with each other. The Italian occupiers are not a very militaristic group, so life under them is almost normal. After Italy throws out Mussolini and attempts to stop its alliance with Germany, however, the German army in Greece clamps down hard, kills a large number of the Italian soldiers and makes life much harder for the Greeks. Corelli has to flee the island to save his life. He attempts to return after the war but misreads what he sees and decides that Pelagia has married and has a child so he stays away. It takes 30 years before they finally get back together.
One of the things that we noted was how the character Carlo had to hide his homosexuality and suffered because of it. He proved to be very brave and gave his own life to save Corelli. Another thing noted was the ineptitude of the Italian army when trying to invade Greece, and the barbaric behavior of the German army. The use of the mandolin and music to tie people together was also interesting.
We also noted the similar story lines of our previous book, "The Island of Missing Trees", where a Turkish girl and a Greek boy on Cyprus have to break up because of objections from their families and society, and this book where a Greek woman and Italian man can't publicly show affection because Greek society would have ostracized the woman.
We all agreed that the first 50 or so pages of the book were very difficult to read. Once the main story line starts the book is much easier to read. We all liked the book and thought that it was worth reading. As could be expected, the movie changed the story line somewhat, skipped a lot of the details, and finished with a much happier, romantic ending, according to Jim & Margaret.
There is no meeting scheduled for December. The book for January is "Song of America" by George Mardikian. The current plan is to meet on January 18th at Mim's. I hope to see a lot of you there.
Leroy