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The Return
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘At last – a beach book with a heart’
(Observer )'A compelling story that has rarely left the bestseller list this year and deservedly so'
(Sunday Express )Product Description
Beneath the majestic towers of the
Seventy years earlier, the café is home to the close-knit Ramírez family. In 1936, an army coup led by Franco shatters the country’s fragile peace, and in the heart of
Captivating and deeply moving, Victoria Hislop’s second novel is as inspiring as her international bestselling debut, The Island.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a review! A warning for potential purchasers,
By
This review is from: The Return (Paperback)
Before launching into the reviews set out below, please beware that several give crucial parts of the plot away without warning!
37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A damm good read!,
By Lindy Lou "Book Buff" (Spain) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Return (Paperback)
I was lent this book by a friend and I have to say that initially I felt it wasn't my type of book - I usually read a lot of detective books. However, I found myself completely drawn into the story. I won't repeat the story as you can read the synopsis from the book and others have also given the gist of the book (although I feel not to the book's advantage).
I live in Spain and the descriptions of modern Granada and Andalucia made me yearn for the image of Spain that until quite recently it used to be - white-washed buildings, proud Spanish, gentle pace of life. When the author then took the readers back in time to the events around the Spanish Civil war, I couldn't believe how angry I became at the completely senseless waste of human life. I knew very little about the war and this book was my catalyst for finding out more about it. I have never read a book which has stirred my emotions in such a way as this one, and I would recommend it to anyone. In fact another friend now has the book and she feels the same pull of the book too. So perhaps its because we are in Spain and we are more empathic to the content than others, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and could't put it down.
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Strange hybrid of hen-lit and harrowing war narratives,
By
This review is from: The Return (Paperback)
The first 150-pages of this novel are fairly mundane chick-lit - or rather hen-lit -stuff; in 2001 two female friends, Sonia and Maggie, approaching middle age, go off to Granada for a dance course.
The descriptions of the dance classes and the routines they have to follow are interesting at first but for me they soon begun to pall. Maggie finds a Spanish lover and Sonia makes friends with an elderly waiter who starts to tell her about the Spanish Civil War and its effect on people he knew. When we switch to the waiter's narration the tone darkens. Many of the scenes described during the war are harrowing and I can understand why someone who bought this book as a light beach read might be disappointed with it. Victoria Hislop has researched the subject and is able to describe situations vividly. I found this war section of the book, if not exactly enjoyable, informative; for example, I was shocked at the treatment Spanish refugees received when they fled to France. Where I felt the book went wrong was having this framework of starting the book in the 21st Century, going back to the period of the Spanish Civil War, and then returning to Sonia in an attempt to tie the two stories together. The link between Sonia and the waiter's war narrative - which I won't reveal - is contrived and failed to suspend disbelief. I feel it would have been far better to have set the novel entirely around the period of the Civil War and its immediate aftermath.
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