Captain Corelli's Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a piece of historical fiction from the timeless 1990s, a book named after one of the major symbolic props featured in the story. Please note that the mandolin in question is not a mcguffin; it is not essential to the plot, but it nevertheless plays a major role during relatively long sections of the book that make me ashamed that I know so little about music.

          I’ll say, right off the bat, that I did begin to warm to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin the more I got into it. Louis de Bernieres has some degree of writing skill, and he chose an interesting setting and subject from which the story grows in a fairly natural manner. It takes place in a community on the western Greek island of Cephallonia during the Second World War; one of the less talked-about theatres of that horrific conflict. Dr. Iannis is an unqualified but nevertheless highly skilled medical practitioner, and occupies a position in his island community which is vaguely shamanic; and living alone with his teenage daughter, Pelagia, his life is divided between helping out the villagers’ odd medical complaints, and writing a history of his home island before their pet goat can finish eating it. There are a few other moderately colourful characters in the community; a communist, a monarchist, a priest, a strongman, a hunky young fisherman, and a mildly irritating small child, but this idyllic life is subsequently torn asunder by the dramatic events which rocked mid-twentieth century Greece – disasters both man-made and natural.

          The focus of the story jumps around a bit. In between the island scenes we see what’s happening elsewhere in the world – chapter 2 is an eclectic monologue from Benito Mussolini (the Italian dictator, as if you didn’t know already), which presents him as a terribly stupid, vain, delusional, cat-hating psychopath simply by putting words in his mouth as he plans an invasion of Greece on the spur of the moment. On occasion we get a first-person narrative from a homosexual Italian soldier called Carlo, through whom we see first-hand the pointless stupidity of the invasion of Greece, the endless cock-ups of the Italian commanders, and the brutal conditions the two forces face as a result. We also get the odd chapter devoted to a few of Cephallonia’s other characters, such as the gluttonous priest or the hermit goat-herd, or else we witness the events of the wider world from noteworthy people, such as the Italian ambassador in Greece as he delivers the declaration of war, or the Greek Fascist Prime Minister (Dictator) Metaxas as he considers his lot in life on the eve of the invasion. The book changes its writing style and perspective many times during its course, sometimes a third person description of the story and major protagonists, sometimes letters or diaries written in the first person of Carlo or Pelagia, and on one occasion at least we’re served a dramatic, theatrical dialogue between Pelagia and Mandras, which has been ‘camped up’ purely for effect. While it is interesting to have so many perspectives on so many interrelated issues, this unfortunately has the price of making chapter-transition quite jarring in places.

          Eventually, with a little help from the Nazi Germans, the Axis forces end up occupying Greece – and this means Cephallonia as well. This is when we meet Captain Antonio Corelli, the mandolin-playing and thoroughly decent Italian officer billeted in Dr Iannis’ house. Naturally he and Pelagia ‘fall in love’ (oh how romantic!) but after a long time of a relatively uneventful military occupation, the main issue being famine, peace on the island is shattered when the war flares up again. Italy itself is invaded by the allies, toppling Mussolini’s regime, and with Italian forces surrendering to the Allies in droves, the joint Italian-German occupation of Cephallonia suddenly brings the war right onto the island itself.

          Much of the book is gruesome. War generally is, but de Bernieres recounts in horrific detail the sort of things that tend to go on; the atrocities, the unbearable conditions of combat, the stomach-churningly graphic injuries, and the psychological scarring of the people involved. There are many unpleasant moments in this book, many disturbing sequences, and those are the times that stick in your mind. But alongside this gruesomeness are many more moments of poignancy; moments that can be genuinely moving to the reader (even a shrivel-hearted old cynic like me), to the extent that as the years of the story go by, all this endless yanking on our heartstrings can actually get a little wearisome. Seriously, it gets to the point of inducing vomit, with all this sentimentality.

          But yes, I did undoubtedly enjoy the book, and not least because as someone who is displaying mild symptoms of philhellenism, it held a natural interest. Part of this was due to the occasional inclusion of the odd Greek word or phrase (transcribed into the Latin alphabet, sadly), and a fairly hands-on approach to twentieth-century Greek history, but there was also a rather sweet character arc involving a tame pine marten called Psipsina – a word which means pussy cat, which not only looks amazing when written in Greek characters, but is also generally a lovely word to say.  

           It is upsetting to see the way that Cephallonia is swept around as a result of the titanic conflict between larger powers, and in some ways it is good to see this historical topic presented from the point of view of ordinary human beings, not historians or strategists or journalists or politicians. Not being an expert on modern Greek history, I can’t actually attest to historical accuracy of de Bernieres' novel, and being a relatively skilled writer he can make an emotive and compelling narrative – but the historian in me can’t help but wonder if the truth of the matter is a great deal more complex than this work of fiction sets out, and I hope that he at least made a thorough investigation into the matter before publishing - but then, expecting a writer of fiction to make a thorough examination of their chosen topic is asking too much. He particularly pours scorn on the ELAS, one of the communist military insurgent groups which one of the characters joins, and whose leader is a thoroughly unpleasant man who goes by the name of Hector, using high-minded Marxist rhetoric as an excuse to be a vicious, greedy, murdering scumbag. De Bernieres certainly picks which side he’s on when he’s writing, and as a result it can, at times, feel a bit partisan.

          While a majority of the book is set during the Second World War, the last fifth of the story negotiates the many long decades that follow the retreat of the Axis powers; first the Greek Civil War, the causes of which could be seen building in the shadows of the occupation, during which the dying embers of Dr Iannis’ and Pelagia’s old life and beliefs are blown out for the last time, then the cataclysmic earthquake in 1953 which reduces every building on the island to rubble, and the years that see the rebuilding of Greece, and Cephallonia in particular, as a tourist hotspot which would cater for the offspring of those who had once visited as invaders, right up to the decade of the book’s publication. While I did like this last section, it did feel more than a little tacked-on to the main story which has already been told; it was an overlong epilogue, to show what happens to the various characters in the aftermath of the historical events it describes, and I could not exactly see what it was all leading towards, or indeed why we had to keep reading. I’ll soften my criticism somewhat by saying that I sort of like this idea of an extended epilogue – better than a book that cuts off the moment it decides it’s over, paying no heed to the devoted reader who has begun to care for these characters and who feels cheated when the story suddenly crosses an arbitrary line. I’m thinking of Cecelia Holland’s Belt of Gold specifically here, but a lot of books are at least partially guilty of failing to satisfy the reader in this regard. Maybe Captain Corelli goes a bit to far in the opposite direction.

          So then, despite my personal reservations with the odd structural choices of the book, the way the narrative jumps around as though screaming for attention, and the times that as a reader I felt a little too distant from what was happening on the page, overall Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a decent book. Louis de Bernieres has tried to put a lot of eggs into one basket here, but besides some cursory shell-damage on a couple of these metaphorical chicken-ovulations, most of them have survived the transit. The characters can be a bit wooden at times, but overall there is this tone of sympathy for these people and the place they represent that blunts many of my criticisms. By all means pick up a copy and have a read if you're that way inclined, and if you've already read it, then well done on you.

Bibillonnia

de Berniere, Louis. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Vintage: Reading. (1998 [First Published 1994])