A review by susie_m
The Island by Victoria Hislop

2.0

Interesting fictionalised piece of history about the island of Spinalonga just off Crete and the people living on it or nearby. Spinalonga was a leper colony until the 1950s and the book is crammed with facts about that and the Cretan way of life in the last century to the point that some of the sentences feel as if they were lifted directly from Wikipedia. It is a long book yet I didn’t feel that I understood the motivations or feelings of any of the characters. I viewed it all as an outsider perhaps because the story was told by one villager who had been there throughout but wasn’t one of the main protagonists. The author seemed to actively set up moments of jeopardy and then forget about them. In all it felt a clunky read about a fascinating piece of social history.