The Island

Books and Good Reading.

Victoria Hislop is the British author of the best-selling novel -The Island. Set in Crete - a favourite place of this author. She has visited the island 25 times past 20 years.

As a student she read English at St Hilda’s college, Oxford, subsequently working in book publishing and public relations. Later she becoming a freelance journalist & Travel writer when a magazine worked for asked for piece on Australia.

Competent in both French and Spanish languages, Victoria Hislop also speaks Italian and German.

The Island is her first novel. It Rocketed to the British No 1 Bestseller in 2006 and was hailed by the Sunday Express as the successor to Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Victoria Hislop is currently working on a new novel set in Spain. She is married to journalist and Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop. They have two children and live in Kent.

Title: The Island: Author: Victoria Hislop.
ISBN 0-7553-0951-0 Publisher: Headline Book Publishing.
website link:http://www.victoriahislop.com/
Price: Around 12 Euros. (£6.99).
Source: Book Sellers/Publisher.

The Island:Victoria Hislop. The Review.

Careful research, a love of Crete and the Cretans, and the author’s vivid imagination combine to produce this heart-warming novel about a young woman’s search for her mother’s past and her own future.

Alexis Fielding is holidaying in Crete with her long-term boyfriend and is uncomfortably aware that the relationship is no longer all that she needs. She takes a few days away on her own to visit Fotini, an elderly woman who lives in Plaka in the north east of the island. This woman was known to Alexis’s mother – the mother who would never disclose anything about her own childhood and her family in Crete. But now she has a letter from her mother to Fotini, a letter that asks Fotini to tell Alexis the tragedy and passion that is her family’s history.

Alexis finds that Plaka is close to the mysterious and deserted Spinalonga island, the former leper colony. Even before meeting Fotini, Alexis is drawn to the place, and as the family’s story unfolds, Alexis learns that Spinalonga is part of that story. The story is about loss and tragedy, a story of war, death and survival, of infidelity, betrayal and murder, of sacrifices, secrecy and lies.

ut it is also a story about forgiveness and the power of love.

In the few days she spends with Fotini in Plaka, Alexis gains a new closeness with, and understanding of, her mother. Unexpectedly too, she finds her dramatic history empowers her to move on in her life with strength and confidence.

This is Victoria Hislop’s first novel, but she writes with assurance, skill and flair about Cretans and their traditional culture. Although by no means a medical thesis on the subject of leprosy, sufficient information is provided about the disease and the effects on sufferers and their families to evoke a deep sense of compassion in the reader. I congratulate her on producing a fascinating book on a sensitive subject with such a deft touch and envy her ability to conjure such a story out of her researches. I will certainly re-visit Spinalonga with this book very much in mind, and imagine I will find it peopled with her vivid characters.

Out of the thousands of novels produced and read every year, this is one to remember.

Ann Lisney