The first paragraph is a warning I ignore just like our protagonist, Amy Whey, does when she opens the door to Roux. Perhaps because it starts off so innocently. A group of suburban women are meeting for their usual “Brain-Dead Mommies Book Club.” Twenty plus of them. The club is Char’s creation so she runs things until the night Angelica Roux shows up, sinks into Char’s leather winged chair and highjacks the club. The drinks are flowing, the women gulping and slurring. After all, this is their night away from husbands and kids. Bring on the G and T. Roux suggests they all introduce themselves since she’s new and, before you know it, they’re all figuring out their spirit animals.
Now that’s something I would have been sucked right into.
The dialogue gets raucous, the tone dangerous, and then Roux introduces the game. “It’s like Never Have I Ever, but for grown-ups.” All you have to do is confess the worst thing you’ve done. Except every round changes—today, last week, last month, last year. Ever. And suddenly Amy realizes Roux knows a secret from her past. A big dark secret. The kind that can blow your domestic life to smithereens. “I could feel it leaking into my bloodstream, spreading like a toxin through me.”
So there you have it, and that’s just the cliffhanger of chapter one.
This is domestic noir, a twisted psychological thriller that raises the stakes threat by threat, reveal by reveal. As an added bonus, Jackson draws an extended metaphor throughout. Amy teaches scuba diving and Jackson hurls us into the deep end of the ocean with just enough air to keep going. We find ourselves exploring wrecks, dredging the silty bottom, and keeping perfectly still as the sharks hover. It’s grim. It’s dark. It involves every kind of domestic issue you can imagine: cheating and betrayal, child abuse, rape, kidnapping, drugs and alcohol, manslaughter. Murder.
In my last book review, I mentioned Atlantis Books. Since we were staying in Firostefani, which is where the current Atlantis Bookstore is located on the island of Santorini, we had to explore it. This cozy shop perches on the edge of the caldera, a vast, black, watery crater created when the volcano exploded on Santorini some 3600 years ago and wiped out the Minoans. A winding path allows tourists to wander up and down its edge and ogle the white-washed houses perched on cliff edges wrapped in greenery. There is a dog, a beautiful, lounging dog that fits perfectly among the quiet cacophony of books, maps, photographs, quotes, and memorabilia.
Atlantis Books is the lovechild of Craig and Oliver, who created the first rendition in 2004 with a group of friends. Previously, it was in Oia (EE-ah) that much photographed white and blue marvel of Greek island architecture. I imagine it’s a labour of love as most people come to browse and not buy. One whole room is devoted to large black and white photographs that chronicle the story of its birth. The shop is stocked with rare books and literature in several languages, philosophy, poetry, and all things Greek. It was a joy to see Leonard Cohen holding a prominent place among the shelves.
As some of you know, I’ve embarked on my writing retreat in Greece. I left Vancouver yesterday (Tuesday) at 6:30am in my first Uber, feeling excited and hopeful. A day later, I’m sitting in a Starbucks at Zurich Airport with free wifi and using my Euro plug. But I still haven’t made it to Greece. I really need to write this all down just to expunge it from my tired, battered brain so I can move on. Literally. If I count, I’ve been out here “traveling” for almost 24 hours, carrying all my gear, and wearing the same clothes.
Monday night, I made the mistake of checking the AC app (I think you all know who AC refers to, Canadian friends. Threatened pilot strike. blah blah blah.) The app announced that my Tuesday morning flight to Toronto with connection to Athens was delayed 1 hour 10 minutes.
I lay there all night, stress hormones literally percolating in my body, trying to decide if I should change my flight because I knew we were cutting that connecting flight really close. I had time I had 30 minutes to run between gates. My travel partner was joining me in Toronto and we were setting off on our Athens flight together. Around 2:30am, I discovered there was a 6am flight. I phoned the AC 24/7 lines five or six times and was told by the pleasant recorded male voice that there was a high level of calls and to be prepared for a three-hour wait time. I still haven’t been able to get through. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep all night so thought why not go out to the airport now and try to get a seat on that flight?
Then I thought, “No, you’ll be fine.”
That’s where I made my second mistake. I should have listened to my intuition.
Screenshot
The Athens flight, along with my partner, departed at 6pm (10 MINUTES EARLY.) Our Vancouver flight left later than predicted. The delay was apparently a mechanical thing. Then, one of the flight attendants was late and we all had to wait for him to arrive and board. Ironically, the best thing on that flight was the kind AC pilot sitting beside me. He helped me unravel the trickier bits of seat trays, overhead bins, and hidden screens. I thanked him and said, “You must wonder how I get through life.” He just smiled. He really was a great guy.
I was first off and raced through Terminal 1 because, you know, I had to try. I found the gate at 6:20pm. I was told that, “Nope. That plane has gone.” In the meantime, AC had rebooked me on a flight Toronto – Zurich – Athens. In theory, this was a decent plan. At boarding time, we, The 300, herded in the loading zones, but there was no plane on the tarmac. It had been in for maintenance that day and wasn’t back yet. About 30 minutes later, the plane appeared and they loaded the people who need extra help. The herd remained jostling anxiously. I wasn’t the only one with connections. About 30 minutes after that, the people who needed extra help came back off the plane and joined us. What? They were doing tests on the plane. Eventually, we all got on and took our seats, and sat there . . . and sat there.
At one point, the whole plane shut down and people stopped boarding. Here are some texts to my friend in Vancouver:
So all the power shut down in the friggin plane and we’re all sitting here in stunned silence.
It’s terrifying and they’re not telling us anything.
The lights are going to black. We’re on emergency power.
What was I thinking? Should I get off and get a hotel? What if this happens while we’re up in the air? I actually texted Tara: “I love you guys.”
When we grabbed the flight attendant, she said it was “just a routine system reboot and it’s 100% now.” She said, she’d made an announcement. Hello, the sound system wasn’t working.
We sat there in scary mode so long, one family with young kids decided to leave the plane. I understood. I was on the cusp of bailing myself when the captain came on to reassure us that everything was just fine. The new problem was the family’s luggage was packed in the hold with the other 300 suitcases. So, we sat there another 45 – 60 minutes while the ground crew rifled through the bags to give them their luggage and the mechanics tried to repair the inflight entertainment system. They were unsuccessful but it took two hours of trying. “It’s for the passengers, you know.”
Eventually, we left. Two hours late. Meaning, I lost my Athens connection in Zurich.
Then, we had a medical emergency somewhere over the ocean. The flight attendants canceled breakfast for everyone but business class because they love business class and they were too busy. Nope, they couldn’t even serve coffee—the coffee maker was broken or something . . . When we finally landed, we were told not to move because the paramedics had to come through to pick up the person. No problem. I’m no longer in a hurray.
So, there you have it. It’s Wednesday afternoon Zurich time and I’m hunkered down in this clean modern airport with a beautiful view of Swiss trees, tarmac, and planes. I have a dinner voucher worth 31 Swiss Franks (something like $50CA.) It’s raining, but I’m on the ground and I’m safe. I have a boarding pass that says I have a 7pm flight to Athens and I’ll arrive around 10:30 tonight and join my travel partner in the hotel. I haven’t slept yet and I really need a shower. But as always, I remained calm throughout. Well, mostly.
This is my first trip in seven years. Hmmmm . . . I know these are first world problems, but SSHHIIITTTT!
Whenever I travel, I immerse myself in the place before I go. I don’t just read up on sites and hotels, I read fiction, particularly if it’s well-researched. The myths surrounding a location, and the fiction inspired by it, are things that bring a setting to life. Sometimes, the setting is a character who cannot be ignored. Such is the case with Love & Olives.
I found this novel through a search for “fiction Greece” at my local library, and it turns out, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I breezed through it, partly because Jenna Evans Welch is an excellent storyteller, but also because she caught me in her net right from the start. I loved Olive Varanakis from page one when she shared the secret of her recurring drowning dreams, and I needed to know how her life would change. This YA book will appeal to teens, but also anyone who’s interested in the myth of Atlantis and the magical island of Santorini.
The quest to find Atlantis is window dressing to the real story of a seventeen-year-old girl who is given the opportunity to find herself and her lost father. Tragically, Nico Varanakis, left her and her mom when she was eight and no one ever explained why. Naturally, Olive took it personally. She’d spent hours helping her dad research Atlantis and suddenly he vanished. Present day Olive has reshaped herself as Liv. An amazing artist, she has a boyfriend about to graduate and attend Stanford. Dax wants her to join him, but Liv longs to go to Rhode Island School of Design (a real college.) When she receives a postcard from her long-lost father asking her to come to Santorini, she’s too angry at first to accept. But her mom talks her into going. (I have to say, I’m not enamored with Liv’s mom for keeping her dad’s secret for nine years, but when you’re setting up a story, conflict is as integral as mysteries and secrets. Nico is now creating a documentary for National Geographic about his lifelong search for Atlantis and he needs her help. Enter the B-plot, a young documentary filmmaker—Theo of the amazing eyelashes.
He was the kind of good-looking that doesn’t ever have to try to be good-looking. And he clearly was not trying. There was something infuriatingly careless about him, like he’d rolled out of bed and left the house without looking in a mirror (62).
The romantic subplot in this story is charming but the author never leaves us thinking this is just a romance. Theo and Liv lead us on an exciting tour while they film their documentary about Nico’s lifelong search for Atlantis. We even discover the secret that drives his obsession and the reason why he left Olive so long ago.
As always, I learned more from this fictional story—set on the island of Santorini and which I’m visiting for a brief moment in just a few weeks)—than any guide book. And it’s inspired me to dive into the salty Aegean Sea and explore Atlantis myself.
I can’t say Atlantis is something I’ve just stumbled upon through reading Love & Olives. It’s been circling my soul since I first heard Donovan spin the poetic tale in 1968 in his mystical Scottish whisper. Having memorized the lyrics, I could recite it along with him, my favourite lines being these:
“The antediluvian kings colonized the world. All the gods who play in the mythological dramas in all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis.”
Antediluvian is one of the juiciest words ever created, along with primordial and primeval, and refers to the time period before Noah built his ark to survive the biblical flood. The story originated with Plato, who supposedly heard it from the Egyptians. But I digress.
Things I loved about this book:
A Bird’s Eye View of Oia (pronounced EE-ah.) If you’ve never heard of Oia, it’s the iconic white clifftop city with the cobalt blue domes that appears in every guidebook that mentions Santorini. Liv’s father was born on Santorini and now lives in Oia with his partner, Ana. Theo is her son.
The Lost Bookstore of Atlantis. In the story, Nico built the bookstore for Ana because she’d always wanted one. It even has a hidden bedroom with twin beds where Liv bunks with Theo in a very chaste way. Fortunately, there is a real Atlantis Books, which is not in Oia, but on the cliffside of Firostefani, Santorini, at the base of the Nomikos Cultural Centre, and it happens to be very close to where we’re staying!
The Structure. There are 26 chapters and each begins with a piece from Liv detailing 1 of the 26 things her father left behind . . . “most of them were throwaways, but I kept them anyway” (487). She held onto them in a box through the many moves she made with her mother. If that doesn’t endear you to this narrator nothing will.
Visits to Sites. Theo and Liv film at various sites that I’m now excited to see. Akrotiri is a Bronze Age Minoan archaeological site. Similar to Pompei, Akrotiri was destroyed by earthquakes and a massive volcanic eruption sometime between 1620 and 1530 BC. Many artifacts are housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, but the 20-hectare site is open to the public. Are these remnants of Atlantis?
History & Philosophy. Plato (c. 427 – 348 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period. His teacher was Socrates and his student was Aristotle.
“In Timaeus Plato expounds the origin and system of the universe in a brilliantly imagined scheme of creation and divine and mortal characteristics; together with its companion piece Critias, the foundational text for the story of Atlantis, it is among Plato’s most enduring and influential dialogues.” —Oxford University Press
Plato’s Beach Clues to Atlantis. Plato writes that there were three different coloured beaches: one black, one white, and one red in the area of Atlantis. Do these beaches exist on Santorini? Yes, they do. Theo and Liv film at Kamari, a Black Beach created from volcanic material close to Fira. They also go to the White Beach and the Red Beach near Akrotiri. Liv’s impression: “Orangey-red cliffs stood tall and commanding before dropping abruptly to a narrow strip of beach that crumbled almost immediately into pristine turquoise surf, the color contrast so stark and startling that it made my eyes water” (365.)
The Open Air Cinema. Theo takes Liv to Cinekamari where they watch Some Like it Hot featuring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, along with Marilyn Monroe. This cinema actually exists near the black beach! How gorgeous is this venue?
I actually think we should be staying longer in Santorini. Or perhaps this is just an appetizer and I’ll be returning. This one little island (which is actually made up of five islands) has much to share.
Many thanks to Jenna Evans Welch for her wonderful introduction to Santorini. If you want more, Love & Olives is part of her “teen girls going abroad to find love” trilogy. Love & Gelato (set in Florence) and Love & Luck (set in Ireland) were New York Times best sellers and I can understand why. Methinks Miss Jenna knows what she’s doing.
I don’t know how many times I’ve watched The Last Kingdom BBC series. It’s riveting and very well produced. I appreciate that both sides — Saxons and Danes — are presented equally, meaning there are people you will love and detest among the both cultures. Uhtred, the hero of this series, sits squarely in the centre.
Several generations of my father’s Carr ancestors resided in Yorkshire; I imagine that’s where my Scandinavian DNA derives from as Northumbria was the first Danish stronghold in England.
A couple of weeks ago, I found several books from the original series by Bernard Cornwell at my favourite local Indie book store, Western Sky Books. I bought the first four, and just finished reading book 1.
“The best battle scenes of any writer I’ve ever read, past or present. Cornwell really makes history come alive.” —George R.R Martin
Indeed, the raw, visceral, action scenes will port you to 886 AD where you’ll meet the eager Danes who seek the land and the pious King Alfred who fights to drive them off so he can unite the kingdoms of England under his rule. Enter Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who’s taken by Earl Ragnar as a child and raised as a pagan warrior in northern England—territory already controlled by the Danes.
The book follows much like the series, except the feisty Brida doesn’t appear in Uhtred’s life until he’s sixteen. Their sexual liaison is short-lived as she ships out with young Ragnar while Uhtred stays with Alfred. In Book 1, we see him marry Christian Mildrith who gives him a son as well as her debt. And in the final climatic scene, Uhtred sends Ubba Lothbrok to Valhalla in an intense, visceral, man-to-man brawl.
One of the differences here, is that three of Ragnar Lothbrok’s sons are invading England: Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan, and Ubba. Cornwell’s book is well-researched using The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, penned during Alfred’s time (possibly by the king himself) and Asser’s life of King Alfred as well as secondary sources. He admits, “I have feathered lavishly” (333.) Indeed, but it’s a brilliant feathering and we come as close to being there as is possible.
The book includes a map and a glossary of place names written in both the ancient tongue and the modern. Bernard Cornwell is one of the presenters at The Historical Novel Society Conference this September in Darlington UK. I almost signed up, but alas, Greece called. I’m sure he will infuse the participants with his sage knowledge and impeccable writing style. Maybe next time. *Highly Recommended.
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