Songs of Blue and Gold [Paperback]

When you live here year-round on Corfu, it's easy to overlook the island's captivating beauty as well as the interesting and notable people who once resided here. A day in front of the computer overshadows the millions of olive trees with glinting silver leaves. A dreaded trip to the dentist in Corfu Town eclipes the flowers, exploding like fireworks in all shapes and colours. Everyday routines triumph the sea, as smooth as a dish of honey, dotted with boats, swimmers and, perhaps, underwater secrets. A white house built on the shore overlooking Kalami Bay becomes just another house - not the former residence of poet, novelist, traveller and iconoclast Lawrence Durrell.

Songs of Blue and Gold by Deborah Lawrenson brought the best of Corfu back me. This is the story about two women: Melissa, an unhappily married archivist, and her mother Elizabeth, who on her death bed presents her daughter with a startling and mysterious key to her past: a copy of Collected Poems by Julian Adie, Lawrenson's fictional version of Lawrence Durrell. On the title page an inscription by the author reads: 'To Elizabeth, always remembering Corfu, what could have been and what we must both forget.'

So begins Melissa's journey from England to Corfu to the South of France in search of her mother's past relationship with Adie as well as an internal exploration of her own unhappy personal life. Structurally complex, the novel moves from Melissa's investigations to passages of Elizabeth's time spent on Corfu with Julian Adie to fictional biography book excerpts detailing Adie's many lives and loves. A timeless character who seduces all those around him both in life and after death, Adie acts as a bridge between Elizabeth's past and Melissa's present. His biography makes Melissa question the biographies of others, including her mother Elizabeth's, and the revelation that past events shape as well as influence the lives of those in the present tense.

Lawrenson's description of Corfu, and particuraly of Kalami - both past and present - is thoughtful, delicate and beautiful. Her words paint the island at its best. Take this passage, which I can easily read over and over again: 'Each time she walked the tiny main road, effectively barely more than a lane, she noticed more: the powerful scent of jasmine escaping over a wall; bright globes in orange and lemon trees; the violent trumpets of morning glory winding through wire fencing; and everywhere the ancient gnarled olive tree, each composites of several intertwining trunks, some so holed and intricately braided you could see right through them.'

Ah, Corfu! Equally impressive, Lawrenson delves deep into the tricky and highly subjective world of time and memory, and the gaps which break as well as the bridges that bind the two together. In this way Songs of Blue and Gold can be classified as a work of literary fiction. Then again, the portryal of Melissa's investigations into her mother's past while searching for answers in her own personal life often reads as a cat-and-mouse game, a mystery which needs solving in the most literal sense through clues found in conventional scenes and conversations. A commerically viable technique, perhaps, however I couldn't help but feel let down by the scores of standard plot-moving dialogs. On whole, however, I appreciated the major issues and themes this book explores. I have the feeling that if the real Julian Adie (Lawrence Durrell) read Songs of Blue and Gold, he would smile.

Having been very disappointed with Deborah Lawrensen's 'The Art of Falling' I nearly gave this book away without reading it. I'm glad I didn't: 'Songs of Blue and Gold' is a far more interesting novel, with much more fully-developed characters, better dialogue and a more intriguing and complex story. The novel centres around a bohemian poet and novelist, Julian Adie (closely based on Lawrence Durrell) who led a wild life in Corfu, Egypt and the Languedoc in Southern France. Melissa, a thirty-something archivist whose marriage is breaking up, is nursing her dying mother Elizabeth when she discovers an inscription from Adie, including the lines 'to what could have been, and what we must both forget' in one of her mother's books. Elizabeth dies shortly after, and Melissa sets out for Corfu to find out more about Julian Adie and how he knew her mother, inadvertantly beginning another quest; for a partner who will satisfy her intellectually and treat her better than her philandering husband. During both quests she travels from Corfu back to London to Kent to the Languedoc, learning a great deal more about both Julian Adie and herself.

This book was a very pleasant 'switch-off' read. The descriptions of Corfu and the Languedoc were beautiful, and Melissa and her artist mother Elizabeth sympathetic and enjoyable protagonists. Alexandros, the scholar and architect who Melissa meets on Corfu, was a far more satisfactory and interesting lover than the jovial Matteo in 'The Art of Falling', and Lawrensen introduced an interesting love-interest into Elizabeth's later life with the thoughtful Bill. The ending was also well balanced, not quite the 'they all lived happily ever after apart from the nasty people' of 'The Art of Falling', but lyrical and distinctly hopeful. And the use of Lawrence Durrell as a leitmotif gave the book a good shape. I wouldn't give the novel more than three stars as I didn't really feel, on balance, that Lawrenson went very deep in exploring character or emotions. Julian Adie came across on balance as so odious (particularly as an older man) that one couldn't help wondering why so many women fell for him, with his wild promiscuous ways, drinking and self-love - yes, I know some men in real life seem to behave obnoxiously and stll be adored, but even so! Melissa's husband was somewhat of a pasteboard villain, as was the American academic hellbent on proving that Adie was a murderer; I'm afraid I was so tired of Adie's exploits by halfway through the book that I couldn't care if he was or not. (Was Larry Durrell as obnoxious as Adie, really?) I felt that it was only in the final pages that Lawrensen let herself really explore what Melissa and Alexandros felt for each other - before then there was rather too much to-ing and fro-ing, with first one then the other withdrawing for seemingly no reason. And the descriptions of Corfu and France - like Italy in 'The Art of Falling' - were somewhat idealized: no talk of recession or intrusive tourists, little talk of lack of employment and lots of incredibly kindly and often glamorous locals. The Corfu tourist board should give Lawrenson an award.

Ultimately a sweet and quite well-written novel, and a great read if you want something light, but not a book that goes very deep - at least, this is what I thought.

This is a wonderfully written book that draws you in to the life of heroine and her mother's unrevealed past. It describes Corfu and Provence in rich colour and left me looking forward to my next visits. It is also fascinating examination of the main male character, a cypher for Lawrence Durrell, and the difficulty of separating biographical fact from bias and supposition. Pity about the rather unspectacular cover (supposed to be mediterranean, looks more like 'Local Hero').