The Island

The island of Spinalonga lies off the north coast of Crete and between 1903 and 1957, was Greece’s main leper colony. That much is fact. The remainder of Victoria Hislop’s debut novel, entitled simply The Island, is fiction.

It’s the story of Eleni, her husband Georgiou and her daughters Anna and Maria – the family that Sofia, who now lives in England, never speaks of. However, when her daughter Alexis decides to visit Crete, Sofia gives her a letter to take to her old friend Fotini, promising that through her, Alexis will learn about the past.

The story starts with a young Londoner, Alexis Fielding, preparing to go on holiday. She’s at a questioning stage in her life, mid twenties, pondering her future with her long term boyfriend whilst about to embark on an already planned holiday with him and also intrigued by her mother Sofia’s obvious unwillingness to discuss much about her childhood upbringing in her native Crete.

So she sets off on this already arranged holiday with her soon to be dumped boyfriend. In the second week, she decides to leave him to his own devices and drives off to Plaka, where she easily finds the little taverna run by Fotini and her family and is welcomed to stay. In her letter to Fontini, Alexis’s mother has asked her to explain her family’s history to her daughter as she feels unable to herself. Alexis takes up Fontini’s offer to stay with them for a few days and so we are taken back in time while the story of Alexis’s great grandmother, grandmother and mother is revealed.

July Meeting

The July meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 27th June.

The Ivy Chronicles

When Ivy Ames, a high-powered Wall Street executive, comes home to find her unemployed husband in bed with the wife of the traitor who's just taken her job, she decides a drastic and swift change is in order, Now jobless, husbandless, apartmentless--and even a bit clueless--she must find a way to put her life back together and take care of herself and her two young daughters.

Down on her luck and with surprisingly little money left, she opens a business consulting with parents of toddler-aged children who dream of attending New York City's most prestigious kindergartens. And oh, the misadventures that follow! From the self-important Stu who thinks his pampered kid is the next Einstein to the lesbian mothers raising a talented disabled African-American little boy they adopted ("the triple crown of diversity that every school would covet"), Ivy's clients run the gamut.

Her efforts to start this new business, embark on two teetering romances, tend to her own children, and find a new way in the world makes for a hilarious, over-the-top read. What begins as a business move born of pure financial desperation turns into a woman's quest to reinvent herself, and in the process expose the unbelievably preposterous underbelly of Manhattan's elite private school admissions process ...for five year olds.

Based on the author’s experiences, it’s a real eye-opener to the wheeling and dealing of well-heeled New Yorkers as they battle to place their four-year olds in the best private kindergartens! It’s an astute hoot. Really poking at the lengths people will go to be seen to be socially elite, all bound round a charming romance in a nice easy read.