It Just Runs In The Family

The Green Shore by Natalie Bakopoulos (Simon & Schuster; 368 pages; $25).

 

Good writing must run in the Bakopoulos family.  Brother and sister, Dean and Natalie Bakopoulos have written three books between them.  Dean is the author of Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon (2004) and My American Unhappiness (2011).  This year, Natalie joins her brother with the release of her lush and picturesque debut The Green Shore.  They are the children of immigrants; their mother is Ukrainian and their father is Greek.  In a nod to her father’s birthplace, Natalie sets her story mostly in Greece and focuses on a dark period of the country’s history, one that is virtually unknown to most: the 1967 to 1974 military dictatorship.

 

This period in Greek history, quite honestly, was Greek to this reviewer.  Natalie Bakopoulos, though, takes this event and personalizes it.  In her novel, the political becomes personal, and the personal becomes political.

 

Bakopoulos does this by introducing readers to one Greek family and telling the story from multiple perspectives: Eleni, the matriarch and doctor with a passion for healing; her brother Mihalis, a poet who was once in exile; her daughter Sophie, a rebel at heart who flees Greece for Paris; and younger daughter Anna, a reluctant revolutionary but perhaps the fiercest of them all.  Revolution and resistance seem to be part of this family’s DNA sequence.  They all resist the military junta, yet each finds unique ways to oppose the colonels.  This family truly drives Bakopoulos’s story as we see what revolution will do to a country, a city, a community, and a family.

 

Since Bakopoulos is part Greek, she is intimately aware of Greek history and tradition.  Her knowledge and familiarity with Greece make this story all the more authentic.  Early on in the novel, Eleni and the rest of the family celebrate Easter.  Each takes a dyed-red egg.  Bakopoulos writes, “As was tradition, they would each take a hard-boiled, bright red egg and hit it together with the adjacent person’s, first the pointed end and then the round.  The last one with an intact egg was destined to have good fortune for the rest of the year.”  Reading this description, I could not help but wonder if the family itself would be cracked and broken by novel’s end.  Bakopoulos’s use of this Greek tradition is clever foreshadowing.

 

Although the family is intact by the end of the book, the dictatorship has altered each of them.  Eleni decides to help those people who have been tortured and abused by the government.  She, along with an intriguing man she meets, opens up a free clinic in secret.  This is Eleni’s way of resisting the junta.  Mihalis, meanwhile, continues to write and speak out against the colonels.  He, more than the others, is on the military’s radar since he is an artist and former exile.  His vitriol, not surprisingly, gets him into trouble once again.  It is Mihalis’s spirit that Sophie has inherited.  She and her boyfriend, Nick, get caught up in the early days of the revolution.  The colonels take Nick prisoner and Sophie flees to Paris.

 

The Paris setting allows Bakopoulos to explore another locale, but the heart of this novel lies in Greece, not in France.  And it shows in the writing.  As far as this novel goes, Paris cannot hold a candle to Athens.

 

Sophie may be away from the dictatorship, but the revolution is still a part of her quotidian existence.  It is through Sophie’s absence from Greece that Bakopoulos is able to focus on how a person can be homesick not only for a family but for a country, even for a nation in political turmoil.  Bakopoulos shows Sophie’s deep longing for home, a sentiment that only grows as the years go by.

 

Perhaps Sophie is less of a revolutionary in Paris, but only because she is not directly involved in the resistance.  Sophie, though, soon becomes a revolutionary in other, more personal and unexpected ways when she is pregnant and happily unwed.  The traditional Eleni must come to terms with her daughter’s newfound independence.

 

With Sophie’s departure from home, the younger Anna feels lonely.  She turns to her older married lover for comfort, but their relationship is doomed to fail, as all such associations are.  Anna is brooding and moody much of the time.  The decision to rebel comes too abruptly in her case.  It is almost as if she thinks protesting the junta is the ultimate way to stick it to everyone in her life.  I felt Bakoupoulos should have provided more allusions to Anna’s ultimate path.  However, in some cases, it is only one event or even one split second that prompts a person to resist.  But it feels wrong for Anna.  Her resistance almost gets her killed.

 

When The Green Shore ends, the military is still in power, although the last days of the junta are near.  Bakopoulos shows us that, regardless of revolution, life still goes on.  Lovers marry.  Women give birth.  Children grow.  The elderly die.  These are a fact of life and do not change based on political leanings or whims.

 

Natalie is the new Bakopoulos to watch.  Good writing or a rebellious spirit—sometimes it just runs in the family.

 

The Green Shore comes out June 5.  Bakopoulos will sign copies of her novel and do a reading from the book at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 27, 2012.

 

The version I read was an Advance Reader’s Edition.

 

Cool Off With June Books

There are lots of good books to lose yourself in this month.  Take them to the pool, the lake, or the beach.  Just don’t get mad at me if you are so immersed you forget to put sunscreen on!

There are a number of novels that I am excited about for June.  They are all very different so maybe there is a book here that will appeal to you, too.  If you read any of these books, please drop me a line and let me know what you think.  I welcome your comments.  Perhaps we could even read together.

Here are some books to cool you off this month:

The first is Natalie Bakopoulos’s “The Green Shore.”  I was lucky enough to read an ARC of this that I won through Good Reads.  I absolutely loved it!  Set in Greece (and Paris) in the late 1960s and early 1970s during Greece’s military dictatorship, Bakopoulos focuses on a Greek family and how revolution seems to be part of their DNA.  Bakopouplos is the brother of Dean Bakopoulos, author of “Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon.”  I think good writing must be part of the Bakopoulos DNA!  Natalie will visit Lemuria Books in Jackson, MS, on June 27, for a signing and reading.  I hope to meet her there.  “The Green Shore” comes out June 5.  I will be posting my review this week.  Hopefully, I can interview Natalie here.

 

 

Daniel Kalla’s “The Far Side of the Sky” will be released on June 4.  Kalla writes about Westerners in Shanghai during the late 1930s.  According to the product description, “The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish Second World War history, where cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival.”  Kalla is the author of “Pandemic.”  It is a novel of love and death in Shanghai.

 

Francesca Segal’s “The Innocents” is getting a lot of buzz.  The book does not even come out until June 5, but no matter.  In the past week, I have read reviews of the novel in both ELLE and Vogue.  Yes, I do trust both.  Both magazines loved the novel.  I expect I will, too.  The book’s description says: “A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment, “The Innocents” is a generous and deeply satisfying look at a close-knit society in which one young man’s pre-wedding panic illuminates the universal conflict between responsibility and passion.”  Will be a great read before that June wedding you’re going to!

 

 

Kristen Den Hartog’s “The Girl Giant” will also be released June 5.  This book is already a bestseller in Canada.  According to Good Reads, “Set just after World War II, The Girl Giant tells the story of Ruth, an immensely sympathetic young girl who is quickly and inexplicably growing into a giant. An only child and an outcast among her peers, Ruth spends much of her time alone. “I stood alone on the playground as the swings flew and the monkey bars filled up with children. My hands reached almost to my knees; I was all wrong, out of proportion.” But Ruth possesses a gift, a strange second sight. “  Sounds intriguing!

If you are craving social satire this summer, look no further than “Seating Arrangements” by Maggie Shipstead.  This book comes out June 12.  Good Reads calls it: “Hilarious, keenly intelligent, and commandingly well written, Shipstead’s deceptively frothy first novel is a piercing rumination on desire, on love and its obligations, and on the dangers of leading an inauthentic life, heralding the debut of an exciting new literary voice.”  This one should be great!

 

Because I am a sucker for apocalyptic novels, I am really looking forward to “The Bird Saviors” by William J. Cobb.  This book will be released June 12.  “The Bird Saviors” has it all: a pregnant teen, economic collapse, climate change, a fuel crisis, cults, and fundamentalist preachers.  I cannot wait!

June 12 also marks the release date for Emily Jeanne Miller’s “Brand New Human Being.”  According to the novel’s product description, “Meet Logan Pyle, a lapsed grad student and stay-at-home dad who’s holding it together by a thread. His father, Gus, has died; his wife, Julie, has grown distant; his four-year-old son has gone back to drinking from a bottle. When he finds Julie kissing another man on a pile of coats at a party, the thread snaps. Logan packs a bag, buckles his son into his car seat, and heads north with a 1930s Lousville Slugger in the back of his truck, a maxed-out credit card in his wallet, and revenge in his heart.”  This might be the read of the summer!

June 19 is the publication date of “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” by Carol Rifka Brunt.  “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” is Brunt’s debut novel.  Good Reads calls it “an emotionally charged coming-of-age novel, Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a tender story of love lost and found, an unforgettable portrait of the way compassion can make us whole again.”

Another novel set for a June 19 release is “The Red House” by Mark Haddon.  Haddon previously wrote “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”  The product description boasts “The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner — a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.“  I only hope Haddon’s newest lives up to the hype.

Joshua Henkin’s “The World Without You” is also slated for a release date of June 19.  Henkin is the author of “Matrimony.”  Good Reads describes the novel as “Set against the backdrop of Independence Day and the Iraq War, The World Without You is a novel about sibling rivalries and marital feuds, about volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, about the true meaning of family.”  I think it will be perfect for fans of Stephen Dau’s “The Book of Jonas” and Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.”  This is sure to be a much talked-about book.

Am I saving the best for last?  Well, we’ll see.  I am definitely anticipating “The Age of Miracles” by Karen Thompson Walker.  It comes out June 26.  This is a young adult, coming-of-age novel that is sure to appeal anyone who liked Grace McCleen’s recent novel “The Land of Decoration.”  Perhaps these are books that should be read together.

Lots of books to read this June.  Which novel are you anticipating this month?