Tennant, Emma. A House in Corfu: a Family’s Sojourn in Greece. Henry Holt and Company, 2002.
Reason read: in January 1981 Greece joined the European community.
So you want a house on the Greek island of Corfu? It is going to take a lot of work…as Emma Tennant’s parents soon found out. In A House in Corfu it is the 1960s and Emma’s parents have been entranced by a spot at the mouth of a mythological bay. Supposedly, this is the spot where Odysseus came ashore; where Nausicaa took him in. The Tennants decide to build a house they name Rovina. Emma Tennant’s romantic descriptions make Rovina sound like a fairytale when it was all said and done, but first there was the initial build where troubles naturally abounded. Water was difficult to find. (The search went on for seven weeks while the family relied on rainwater.) Supplies needed to come by boat from a tiny harbor and hauled up the countryside. Then there were the island politics to navigate. The locals used the land as shortcuts to fishing spots. Then there was the one time Tennant couldn’t return to London. Because of a military coup led by Colonel Papadopoulos the planes refused to fly.
Tennant pays tribute to other Corfu writers like Homer, Durrell, and Edward Lear.
While I enjoyed Tennant’s romantic descriptions, her parenthetic comments and run-on sentences were tiring.
As an aside, I love learning new things. I did not realize Greeks have siestas. dhen pirazei means never mind.
As another aside, I am fascinated by the Judas trees Tennant described. I was able to see one that was one hundred years old while I was in Rome. Unfortunately, it was not in bloom.
Lines I loved, “Greece has entered our blood by now, and we can no longer remember the cool summers back home or the precautions taken when embarking on a picnic or a day by the sea: waterproofs, cardigans, rug that may never be unrolled due to sudden, half-expected rain” (p 148) and “The sea is a great cleanser, of body and soul: to feel at first that you are entering the heart of a sapphire or an aquamarine, then to sink deeper into the water that has cold springs as refreshing as a subaqueous shower, is to know that you will come out transformed, like a creature in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and begin the day again as if you had gone nowhere at all” (p 185).
Author fact: I found it interesting that Tennant does not mention a husband, only a son and friends that travel to Greece with her.
Book trivia: There are no photographs of Rovina in A House in Corfu.
Setlist: Melina Mercouri’s “Never On a Sunday”, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get no Satisfaction”.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Corfu” (p 70).
~*LunaSea*~ 