Pascali's Island

Rating:
Summary: Good read
Review: I don't know anything about the author, Barry Unsworth, but this is a masterful work of fiction. It reads like a classic. It's engaging and well thought through. reminded me of Hemingway by way of Camus.

I read this after vacationing in the Greek isles, and the book definitely opened my eyes to some of the more recent history that often gets over-looked in favor of the ancient.

In the end, you may not like Pascalli himself, but you will come to understand him and his motivations. And as unlikeable as he can be, you may even feel sorry for him in the end.

A well told story, and a quick read that I would recommend to almost anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Very disturbing and penetrating
Review: It's not the mastery of language. Nor is it the precision with which Unsworth draws his characters. It is, rather, the skill, always evident in his work, with which he illuminates moral dilemnas that makes this book unforgettable. An intense foray into the mind and heart of am informer, this novel will touch all those who have ever wanted to tell their own story but felt unworthy. A very disturbing and moving work, like all of his other novels that I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Meanwhile, back in 1908...
Review: This novel is a clever time machine. It warps the reader back to 1908, a sun-drenched island, characters abuzz with intrigue, complex psychologies, morphing intentions behind a mirage of simple diction. The far-off sultan is the ever-present "Excellency," steadily sinking into the quicksand upholstery of his throne. The icky Izzet, both product and perpetrator of Ottoman despotism, gives one a clearer idea of just why the Balkans are such a mess today. Mahmoud Pasha, his bellicose boss, reminds one of a stuffed and cogitating mushroom. There is the suave and sordid Herr Gesing, whose tightly wound cravats and sharply cut suits reek not of lavender but of gunpowder and guts. The lithe Lydia traipses around her studio, draws mysterious money, seemingly from cyberspace, frolics on beaches, and gets herself into the briniest of pickles. Anthony Bowles is friendly but fey. One does not know whether to sympathize with his obsessions or to flee them as one would wildly metastasizing microbes. And the weird Pascali? On the paperback cover, he is pictured in suit coat and bowler, bobbing like a fishing lure in a murky sea, the sky spread out over him as a Levantine tent. This seems like a good place for him, since he spends the entire novel observing what is visible, most of him hidden in a kind of mushy and underwater world. The reader will not soon figure him out, and this is part of the galling genius of Unsworth's achievement. To inhabit his mind from first chapter to last, and still never grasp who he is? Pascali is like a remote and glittering planet: observable, fascinating, but always agreeably distant and aloof.