Natalie Bakopoulos
Greece is a special place, a personal
Elysian fields--golden, warm, with air perfumed by the scents of the
Mediterranean. Place this paradise in a vice of fear: in 1967, just twenty-three
years after Nazi occupation, a military junta brings its might to bear on a
populace of “people doing their jobs, not wanting to make a scene.”
Despite the terrible familiarity of “the
energy it takes to stay below the radar” and the knowledge that to think is a
crime in itself, the more mature characters in Natalie Bakopoulos’s intense
first novel, The Green Shore, feel torn
by their wishes for liberty, stability, and protection of family and self.
Typified by the radical poet Mihalis, their reaction to oppression is to suppress
feelings and avoid arrest. The resulting tension becomes unbearable: Mihalis
eventually bursts out from his mild expressions of resistance to full-blown
confrontation, which in turn leads to his arrest and subsequent torture--all described
in an eerie calm of disassociation.
Sisters Sophie and Anna mature
personally and sexually, and the novel draws parallels between the unpredictable
and explosive qualities of political action and their burgeoning sexual
natures. In Sophie’s case the forbidden thrill of political action drives her
from the bosom of family and homeland to the cold, rainy haven of Paris. The
reunification of the family at the novel’s close provides a further sense of
the story as a classic tale. Bakopoulos’s ability to create a compelling family
saga in an intriguing oppressive context makes this novel a fascinating read.
- Rosslyn Bentley
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