The professional reviewer John Humphrys decribes this book as timely, something I would endorse quite emphatically. Outside Greece itself not enough people know of the horrors of the Greek civil war that so divided families and which followed the trauma of some four years of Nazi occupation. But it is timely also in the sense that it appears at a moment of national crisis as Greece confronts the economic constraints imposed by "The Troika" - The European Commission, The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Such is the austerity, such are the repercussions on the people of Greece, that the resulting protests point to the fault lines that once divided Greece into opposing camps. The present corrupt politicians become stooges of a "nazified" Angela Merkel, policemen attack and kill a 15yr old schoolboy while the suicides of a pharmacist and a teacher become a method of public protest. Perceptions have once again become polarized with Athens out of control in December 2008 and liable at any time to return to more chaos.
"The House on Paradise Street" is a novel about historical events that divided the lives of two sisters : Alexandra and Antigone. Brought up in Athens enjoying a middle class background, their paths diverged sharply during the German occupation. Antigone gets drawn into the resistance movement while her elder sister forms a relationship and eventually marries Spiros Koftas, a policeman and Nazi collaborator.
This is far from the full story. This novel is extremely cleverly put together and is seen through the eyes of Antigone and Maud, an English anthropologist who falls in love and marries Antigone's son Nikitas. This son, born in prison, had been left behind in Greece when Antigone escaped to Russia to be brought up by his Uncle and Aunt, so opposed to his mother's ideals.
Even this outline is incomplete but I would be breaking the golden rule of Amazon reviewing if I were to reveal more of this heart-rending story. It is a tale full of moral choices, agonizing decisions that lead to quite extreme experiences. It is the author's ingenuity to ensure the different paths taken by the two sisters recross and that finally a form of reconciliation takes place.
The plot is faultless - quite excellent - and the construction of the novel, anything but chronological, where chapters written in the first person singular are devoted to either Maud or Antigone, is successfully stratified, like geological formations. What seemed less assured was the characterization of these two very different women. Their points of view, likes and dislikes were certainly distinct enough, but the manner in which they express themselves were too similar to be completely credible.
Be that as it may, this novel is a delightful - if at times harassing - read. It is violently anti-war, as complete in its descriptions of the atrocities committed by one side as by the other. Zinovieff is handing out no favours and has no favorites ! Instead she leans towards the hope that future generations do not have to repeat the mistakes of the past. The last chapter reveals Antigone telling her grand-daughter "The past is done and there is nothing we can do to change it. But now it's different, you can leave all that behind. You own the future". That is, I am sure, the message of comfort that Zinovieff wishes to convey in these troubled times.
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