Greece Hotels Travel - Dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece
|
List Price: $15.95
greece-hotels-travel.com Price: $10.85
Your Save: $ 5.10 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
|
Average Customer Rating:   
|
|
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780679744788
ISBN: 0679744789
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 1997-09-02
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1997-09-02
Studio: Vintage
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
"Full of insights, marvelously entertaining . . . haunting and beautifully written."
--The New York Review of Books
"I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint." So begins Patricia Storace's astonishing memoir of her year in Greece. Mixing affection with detachment, rapture with clarity, this American poet perfectly evokes a country delicately balanced between East and West.
Whether she is interpreting Hellenic dream books, pop songs, and soap operas, describing breathtakingly beautiful beaches and archaic villages, or braving the crush at a saint's tomb, Storace, winner of the Whiting Award, rewards the reader with informed and sensual insights into Greece's soul. She sees how the country's pride in its past coexists with profound doubts about its place in the modern world. She discovers a world in which past and present engage in a passionate dialogue. Stylish, funny, and erudite, Dinner with Persephone is travel writing elevated to a fine art--and the best book of its kind since Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi.
"Splendid. Storace's account of a year in Greece combines past and present, legend and fact, in an unusual and delightful whole. "
--Atlantic Monthly
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Heavy, hard to get through!
Comment: I, too, tried several times to get through this book. Even at the height of my fascination with Greece, during which anything with a reference to the marvelous country held my obsession, this book was like a huge, dry steak that I could not digest.
I didn't sense that blood-stirring something extra that I expected.
But a very thorough book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Like chocolate
Comment: I'm amused at reviews that splutter "This isn't like Greece at all! She doesn't get it!" Because such a viewpoint presupposes there is, in fact, an objective 'Greece' that we can all agree on, and she simply failed to notice it.
No, no, everybody's Greece (or Hawaii or Houston or anyplace else) is different, and it's very refreshing to find a book that sees things so differently from the Air Hellene party line. People who think this is a book about Greece are missing the point; it isn't. It's about Patricia Storace, and her reaction to being plunked down in a Balkan nation after growing up somewhere very, very different. If nothing else, she sees the nation with very fresh eyes.
Her writing is lovely, too, rich and slightly bitter-burnt like good chocolate. And to strain this metaphor even further, a little bit every night is better than trying to choke down the whole thing at once.
Lay aside your pride, Philhellenes, and see this book for what it is -- a trip into the mind of a smart, observant and fascinating young woman.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A TERRIBLE BOOK
Comment: Storace's book is a vivid illustration of how even a richly educated individual can be vastly ignorant. She completely misses the mark on the true benevolence behind much of Greek hospitality, and her pitiable retellings of the overtures of Greek men reveal nothing but her own egotism. Despite a solid understanding of Greek language and history, Storace has extremely limited understanding of Greeks themselves, in large part because her own ethnocentrism -- which reveals itself repeatedly in the book -- prevents her from regarding Greeks as equal to Americans. To read her ridiculous "observations" regarding Greeks (All Greeks look alike, Greeks don't smile) is to know the real meaning of The Ugly American.
Her year in Athens was clearly too brief a period for her to understand Greeks.
If you want to know Greeks, spend time with Greeks. Or visit Greece. Do not read this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Greece warts and all
Comment: Storace, a Greek speaking writer goes to Athens to work for a year. She visits various islands and tourst sites describing these in interesting detail. Storace also recounts her personal contacts with oversolicitous men who make it very clear that women are meant to get married and stay home. Women are objects for men and infrequently taken seriously. The writer has ambiguous feelings about the Greeks. She does make lots of friends, but doesn't seem anxious to go back.
Customer Rating:
Summary: hate it! hate it! hate it!
Comment: In the spirit of fairness I have attempted to read this book twice now and have put it down with a sick feeling in my gut. It's the same feeling I get whenever I find myself in the company of someone extraordinarily pretentious and self-absorbed. I just wanted to read something intersesting about Greece. Instead, this book tells me a lot more about the peculiar psychology of the author more than anything else. I hate knowing I wasted my money of this drivel. I've yet to find a better example of mental mastrubation in my Amazon purchases.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
