The theme for March will be the Greece, and we will be reading Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres. I have been looking for a good opportunity to eat greek food, and this book has gotten good reviews. And this time I have a restaurant picked out already; we will be eating at Myconos on Polk St.

Reviews on the Book

"This novel, set on the idyllic Greek island of Cephallonia, follows the lives of its inhabitants from the peaceful days before World War II through the Italian occupation of the island into the present. It is funny, heartbreaking, and horrifying in its fictional testimony to the changes the war exacts on the drunken town priest, the bumpkin fisherman, the gay man who enlists in the army before the war, and the other townspeople. The story centers around a family that includes a widowed, enlightened doctor working on a biased history of the island in his spare time; his clever, independent daughter; and Captain Antonio Corelli, a responsible but irrepressible officer of the Italian garrison who is also a musician and leader of the latrine opera club La Scala. Corelli's Mandolin, delightful and sad, comic and at the same time nearly unbearable in its portrayal of European darkness during the war, is a tour de force depiction of the triumph of life over evil by one of Europe's great comic writers of our time." --Greg Burkman, Booklist

"Brims with all the grand topics of literature--love and death, heroism and skull-duggery, humor and pathos, not to mention art and religion. . . . A good old-fashioned novel." --Washington Post Book World

"An exuberant mixture of history and romance, written with a wit that is incandescent"--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Stunning. . . . A high-spirited historical romance. . . . Remarkable." --The New York Times Book Review -- Review

Dazzling... a fabulous book in the tradition of Tolstoy and Dickens...So joyous and heartbreaking, so rich and musical and wise, that reading it is like discovering anew the enchanting power of fiction. -- San Francisco Chronicle