The Sunrise, by Victoria Hislop (@vichislop) #review @tlcbooktours

20 July 2015 by Melissa

About the book, The Sunrise

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (July 7, 2015)

Internationally bestselling author Victoria Hislop delivers a stirring novel set during the 1974 Cypriot coup d’état that tells the intersecting stories of three families devastated by the conflict. . .

Summer 1972—Famagusta is Cyprus’s most desirable tourist destination in the Mediterranean. Aphroditi Papacostas and her husband, Savvas, own The Sunrise, a wildly successful new luxury hotel. Frequented by only the very wealthiest of Europe’s elite, The Sunrise quickly becomes the place to see and be seen. Yet beneath the veneer of tranquil opulence simmers mounting hostility between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Years of unrest and ethnic violence come to a head when, in 1974, Greece’s coup d’état provokes a Turkish attack on beautiful Famagusta.

The fallout sends the island’s inhabitants spiraling into fear and chaos, and the Papacostases join an exodus of people who must abandon their idyllic lives in Famagusta and flee to refugee camps. In the end, only two families remain in the decimated city: the Georgious and the Özkans. One is Greek Cypriot, the other Turkish Cypriot, and the tension between them is palpable. But with resources scarce and the Turkish militia looming large, both families must take shelter in the deserted hotel as they battle illness, hunger, fear, and their own prejudices while struggling to stay alive.

The Sunrise is a poignant story about the measures we take to protect what we love.

Buy, read, and discuss The Sunrise

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Goodreads

About the author, Victoria Hislop

Victoria Hislop is the internationally bestselling author of The Island and The Return. She writes travel features for the Sunday Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, House & Garden, and Woman & Home. She divides her time among rural Kent, London, and Crete. She is married and has two children.

Connect with Victoria

Website | Twitter

My Thoughts

It’s both perfect timing and kind of eerie that this book has been released as the world watches Greece’s economy crumble, because while The Sunrise is technically an historical novel (though it’s difficult for me to consider events that took place within the span of my lifetime ‘historical’) it’s modern history, taking place only 40 years ago.

Victoria Hislop has taken real events – the ethnic tension between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in Famagusta, Cyprus – woven fictional stories ( a young couple building a luxury hotel, two families (one Greek, one Turkish, obviously), two sons who get lost in the conflict) into them, and created a picture of a moment in time just before a community’s bubble burst.

The story itself is, at times, both shocking and saddening – one line near the end of the novel that hit me hard was a member of one family asking “Are we supposed to hate them now?” about people who used to be neighbors, and are now, because of politics, technically enemies. It’s a line that echoes through history, because we forget that war and conflict aren’t just events on battlefields or stories in newspapers, but involve real people, with real lives.

Hislop, however, takes these moments – big and small, political and personal – and turns them into literary magic. You feel the sun, see the shine of the marble floor in the lobby of The Sunrise, hear the clinking of tableware, the murmur of conversation. You feel the stress of living in opulent surroundings, but with very little resources. Some of the language is downright brilliant, turns of phrase that really put you in 1972 Cyprus, and others are a bit simpler, but they work together to form a cohesive whole.

Famagusta is a real place, and it remains a ghost town, wrapped with barbed wire, abandoned, alone.

Still the reality is that in the novel, and in life, there is always hope. Earlier this year the leaders of both countries met in Nicosia and started the slow process of talking, and of working toward healing.

Goes well with stuffed grape leaves, kalamata olives, flatbread and iced mint tea or Turkish coffee.

Victoria’s Tour Stops

Wednesday, July 8th: Booksie’s Blog

Thursday, July 9th: Novel Escapes

Friday, July 10th: Thoughts on This ‘n That

Tuesday, July 14th: bookchickdi

Monday, July 20th: Bibliotica

Tuesday, July 21st: Lit and Life

Wednesday, July 22nd: she treads softly

Friday, July 24th: Raven Haired Girl

Friday, July 31st: Many Hats

TBD: Book Loving Hippo

TBD: TBD:A Chick Who Reads

TBD: Svetlana’s Reads and Views

The Predictions, by Bianca Zander (@biancazander) #review @TLCBookTours

18 May 2015 by Melissa

About the book The Predictions

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 5, 2015)

Gaialands, a bucolic vegan commune in the New Zealand wilderness, is the only home fifteen-year-old Poppy has ever known. It’s the epitome of 1970s counterculture—a place of free love, hard work, and high ideals . . . at least in theory. But Gaialands’s strict principles are shaken when new arrival Shakti claims the commune’s energy needs to be healed and harnesses her divination powers in a ceremony called the Predictions. Poppy is predicted to find her true love overseas, so when her boyfriend, Lukas, leaves Gaialands to fulfill his dream of starting a punk rock band in London, she follows him. In London, Poppy falls into a life that looks very like the one her prediction promised, but is it the one she truly wants?

The Predictions is a mesmerizing, magical novel of fate, love, mistakes, and finding your place in the world.

Buy, read, and discuss The Predictions

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Goodreads

About the author, Bianca Zander

Bianca Zander is British-born but has lived in New Zealand for the past two decades. Her first novel, The Girl Below, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and she is the recipient of the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writers’ Bursary and the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship, recognizing her as one of New Zealand’s eminent writers. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the Auckland University of Technology.

Connect with Bianca

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

I was a bit trepidatious as I began reading Bianca Zander’s The Predictions, concerned that the entire novel would be pervaded by that “smells like Ren-Faire” feeling of too much patchouli and not enough common sense, as can so often happen when depicting life on a commune, but I needn’t have worried, because the main character, Poppy, leaped off the page, grabbed me by the hand, and took me with her on a journey that, ultimately wasn’t about the facts of growing up in an ‘alternative’ lifestyle, but the universal truth of finding our own definitions of ‘home’ and ‘family.’

For Poppy, both of those things are tied up in people – her younger brother Fred, who has a clubfoot, her mother Elisabeth who, like all adult members of the Gaialands commune, is referred to by her first name, and keeps her motherhood status ambiguous (though we all know Poppy is her daughter.) And then there’s Lukas, fellow commune kid turned rock musician, who is the catalyst for much of the change in Poppy’s life, as well as the anchor that keeps her entirely herself.

Mix in an earthy American hippie fortune teller (Shakti), a decent amount of globetrotting (New Zealand isn’t really a rock mecca) and a lot of growing up (we meet Poppy as an adolescent on the brink of adulthood) and you have The Predictions, an engaging, fast-paced story of love, loss, music, culture, home, family, and how we must all find our own versions of each.

Bonus points for author Zander’s use of language. All of the characters sound appropriate to the period (mid-70’s through 1989) and age-appropriate as well. Double bonus points for having Lukas utter one of my all-time favorite snarky phrases: “Perish the thought.”

I predict that you will find The Predictions interesting and engaging.

No patchouli required.

Goes well with: falafel made from organically grown chick peas, jicama sticks, and beet slaw.