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CHATTO, JAMES ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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The Greek for Love CHATTO, JAMES
Gardners Books 2006 0719568625 / 9780719568626
Good , 8vo A kind of Under the Tuscan Sun for married people with Corfu providing the panoramic backdrop instead of Italy renowned food writer James Chatto's The Greek for Love similarly charts the often comic reclamation of a run-down house, throwing in an assortment of dynamic characters pulled from the neighbourhood. And as with the before-mentioned title, the house at the core of the story serves as a metaphor for a larger project: learning to cope with life, especially when it breaks your heart. The narrative is straightforward enough. During a summer holiday, Chatto and wife Wendy land in a remote corner of Corfu. Though initially underwhelmed, the pair soon become enamoured of the place and decide, with some abandon and a ton of hope, to acquire a property, take leave of their lives in England and Canada, and make the outpost village of Loutses their home. As the years roll by and their family grows, the pair becomes more than just tourists but citizens in the most meaningful sense of the word: their joys and sorrows are shared and shouldered by their community. Thanks to Chatto's eloquent prose and deeply considered perspective, The Greek for Love is not just a memoir. It's a love story, a celebration of cultural differences, and a stunning confessional. "The desire to understand what was happening became obsessive," Chatto writes during one of the book's most affecting chapters. "I was filled with an unexpressed but roiling, unquenchable anger. One night I awoke and lay in the darkness clenched with fury at every novelist who ever manipulated the emotions of the reader, every peddler of fiction who ever invented scenes of sorrow and conjured up artificial misery, as if there weren't enough real despair in the world without generating more. I vowed that I would never write fiction again." Chatto was true to his word, and readers of this exquisite book can thank Corfu for providing the author with such abundant beauty to chronicle.
Price:
26.94 AUD
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