Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

[Lonelymum]

I have just finished reading this book (yes I know, I am about 5 years behind everyone else!) There was so much hype about this book and it was such a bestseller, but I have to say, I cna't see what all the fuss was about. Can anyone explain what makes this such a great novel?

I know there are some very clever people out there who showed me far more was in the Harry Potter books than I ever saw for myself, so please enlighten me as to why this book is so great.

Ooh I'd have to go back and read it again - is years since I read it. From memory, I thought bits of it were kind of irritating - all the swapping PoVs at the beginning, maybe I didn't know enough Greek history for it to make much sense to me - and it just seemed reeeaally long sometimes because it covered so much ground. But lots of it was really moving, very beautiful stuff. It made my dad cry, fgs!

Hope someone else can be more enlightening than this though...

True, it did make me cry once which I suppose says something about it. I cried when the Italians were facing the firing squad and Carlo stood in front of Antonio and took the bullets for him. Very moving stuff.

But that was just one chapter. I saw the film for the first time this weekend and actually thought the film did some things better than the book, eg making Antonio and Pelagia get back together sooner than in the book. All those wasted years in the book - how was that supposed to add to the story? It seemed very unlikely to me somehow.

the wasted years was what made me so sad when I read it.
Carlo was my best character.

Carlo taking the bullets was the bit that made my dad cry. I've never known him cry over any other books, btw, so it must have been sad .

A and P getting back together so soon in the film was a real Hollywood cop-out - I thought it was more poignant the way it was in the book, and said more about the effect the war had had on all of them.

But it was ridiculous! He visited her every year and never once got wind of the fact that she had no husband? Could no-one have told him that her apparent daughter wasn't in fact hers but adopted? In real Life, he would have checked surely? He was there after the earthquake, helping out, wouldn't he have got some clues from there that she was single? Lists of survivors, casualties etc?

The film couldn't really do much else than bring their reconciliation forward by years as how would they film a gap of 50 years? It would need different actors, plus, how to show the passing of years? There isn't exactly much plot in those 50 years to go on is there?

It's not RL though, is it? The whole book has a bit of an undercurrent of whimsy and I think that fits in with it.

I bet with a bit of wrinkly make-up effects and talc in her hair, Penelope Cruz cd've looked 70 .

Is that meant to be a compliment to her Carolina?

Ah well, I suppose now we are getting to the bottom of it. Since I was a child, I have always had an aversion to fantasy books (with a few exceptions). I like my stories to be real. I am more of a biography girl really.

was tongue-in-cheek really. I thought she was pants in that film, totally wrong casting.

I agree LM - there was one bit in it - where he comes back but doesn't speak to her - and I just groaned!

Thought it was pretty average

Carolina, I agree with you, she didn't seem right for the part IMO.

JT, glad you agree. It was like something from Mills and Boon (not that I read M&B) - very weak part of the plot.

I loved the book, thought it was beautiful and very moving (esp Carlo), until I got to the end.

I think it was totally unrealistic. If he loved her he would have wanted to be sure she had moved on. Not just see her with a baby, that was all it took to make him give up completely? After everything that happened? WTF?

Exactly! The baby could have been anyone's baby after all. She had Lemoni around the house a lot in the earlier years which Corelli knew about, so why would he assume that the baby Pelagia was holding was her own?