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. 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. Rose, Hilary. "Victoria Hislop on doing Strictly (the Greek one): My partner is beautiful — I can't stop looking at him". The Times . Retrieved 11 October 2021. It was just beautifully written with a wonderful structure. It did also feel like there was a thread running throughout the entire book. At the end, when Katerina and Dmitri were reading Leonidas's letters to Olga and he describes saving a young Katerina, I completely caved in. Oh my god, the emotion that flooded out of me! It was such a satisfying way to round things off and really brought everything together.

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. The quest for Javier never sinks into sentimentality. Hislop avoids, too, the temptation of a chocolate-box ending. Less successful is Sonia's too-hurried assimilation of everything she has learned from Miguel, given that it leads her to change her life completely. Perhaps warmer memories of her mother are needed, a stronger sense of connection to both mother and father. Our parents' lives, before they had us, can seem like another country, and it requires a deep longing to reach out across the years in understanding to give the quest real meaning. As the novel ends, Sonia's voyage of discovery has maybe just begun. 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 in the humble Greek neighborhood in Thessalonika, and Moreno Jewish neighbors. The book includes some wonderful plotting at the end, where loose ends miraculously get tied up and a prologue/epilogue set up provides a cool set of bookends to the plot. There's even a (pretty predictable) romance to spice things up a bit. This notable documentary undertow was a feature of Hislop's debut, The Island, a multigenerational narrative centred on a leper colony off Crete. After becoming Richard and Judy's top Summer Read in 2006, it went on to sell an astonishing 1 million copies in this country alone. Thousands this summer will read The Return while sunning themselves on Spanish beaches and learn some unpalatable history about their holiday destination.

I found it so interesting from a historical and political perspective on top of the fact that it is just a beautiful and well executed story. Sometimes poignant but never upsetting, this book highlights the strength of love, friendship and resilience over adversity. Complemented wonderfully by Gill Smith’s beautiful illustrations, this is an ideal book for older early readers who are ready explore more complex themes associated such as coping with adversity and having respect for others who may be different from themselves. 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 College, Oxford University, Oxford, England. It was while at University in Oxford that she met her husband, the comedian and journalist Ian Hislop. He read English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. They married in Oxford on 16 April 1988 and now live in Sissinghurst with their two children. Her own husband discovered his secret Scottish heritage when he took part in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? and found that his grandfather was a soldier from Ayr, who helped free France in 1918, and that his great-great-great-grandfather was a crofter from Stornaway in Lewis. “He’s terribly proud of his Scottish roots – he’s entitled to wear the Matheson tartan,” she says. And, not many people know this, he’s a demon Scottish dancer, who can be found on Burns night in Tunbridge Wells doing a very merry Gay Gordons. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend "The Thread" and Victoria Hoslop 's writing as I always admire her research, her deep look even on secondary historical events and her details in people's culture/way of life.

When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed by memories of childhood summers when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her grandfather was one of the regime's generals and in the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of priceless antiquities. How did her grandfather amass them - and what human price was paid for them? He does try to sneak up on me when I’m writing, but I’m paranoid about talking about my work, so I’ve told him he’ll know where my next book is set when he gets the postcard from wherever it is that I’m planning to set it. I never show Ian my books until they are finished. He doesn’t say much about them, in any case. My daughter, who is 18, says she has my book by her bed, which means it’s waiting in the pile to be read. My 15-year-old son, however, has read my new book, The Return. He sent me a text saying, ‘Amazing, mum!’ It’s the best compliment I’ve ever had. I treasure it.”A dramatic and moving adaptation of Victoria’s bestselling novel "The Island" with rich, full-colour illustrations by Gill Smith that will transport the reader to the timeless and beautiful Greek landscape … Victoria Hislop read English at Oxford, and worked in publishing, PR and as a journalist before becoming a novelist. She is married with two children. This made an interesting read from an historical point of view but in terms of characterisation it was poor. I didn't really engage with the characters, I didn't feel the heat or the cold or the fear or the hunger. To me a good novel is that I'm so lost in the plot that I feel that I'm there, this book didn't come near that. Their father’s televisual fame used to embarrass the siblings dreadfully when they were younger, she says. “It’s a bit of a drag having a parent on the telly, I think. But Ian’s famous because people like watching him and Paul Merton – who’s become a real family friend – so we can’t really complain.”

Foster, Sophie (16 June 2019). "Victoria Hislop: 'Ian was in a different league to me at Oxford - he charged me 50p to borrow his essays' ". The Sunday Telegraph . Retrieved 18 June 2019. Helena’s desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth – and to understand the origins of her grandfather’s collection. This cookie is stored by WPML WordPress plugin. The purpose of the cookie is to store the redirected language. But on the day of her departure for Athens, Ellie receives a notebook; one revealing about a man’s trip to Greece.Ultimately captured and imprisoned in the infamous islands of Makronisos and Trikeri, Themis is forced to make a life-changing decision. Why is the book not "literary?" Well, there's way too much of "tell" rather than "show". Some paragraphs use the same adjective twice. However, this is all forgivable because the author attempted to describe such a grand swath of history, and did such remarkable research. Hislop's heroes are trying to survive - not always with success - through all these difficult times. Their lives get tangled up with each other's history and the author does a really good job in unfolding her characters during such an era. 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 dialogue was simple and corny. Sonia's fascination with the city's history intensifies. She frequents a cafe where the elderly owner, Miguel, displays old posters of bullfighters and dancers; he whets her appetite with tales of Lorca and days gone by. Less convincingly, we discover that Sonia lost her invalid mother, Mary, when young and has learned little about her from her father. When Miguel finally tells the story of the Ramirez family, who once owned the cafe, the mysterious English Mary will be brought to life as her younger self - a 1930s Spanish dancer, Mercedes. The ground for this transformation is insufficiently prepared, and the large generation gap unexplained until the end, which tests our credulity.