Book Review: The Last Dance and Other Stories by Victoria Hislop

Victoria Hislop is an English writer, however she is known for writing stories and novels on Greek people and culture. Either she loves Greek culture or wanted to create a different field of interest as a writer. For example, Wilbur Smith’s novels are based out of Africa – with backdrop as both modern as well as ancient. She writes well, language is as high as of expected from the British authors. But sadly, her stories are insipid: they talk too much about the setting, people, their minds, etc…etc. But a firm plot or charming pace is totally missing.

One such bad book is ‘The Last Dance and Other Stories’. The front and the back covers of the book are full of praises from elite newspapers and critics. That’s all paid marketing. This book consists of ten short stories, all set in Greek (modern day Greece).

The first story of the book ‘The Priest and the Parrot’ is an interesting read; this story discusses the silent plight of a young priest who decides to remain celibate all his life for the sake of being saint and religious. Well, eventually he falls in love with a school teacher, Katrina, whom he cured when she went down with almost irrecoverable fever. Also the setting is intrigued because it has been shown that the village has lesser women population than men. So amidst this situation, where every young girl, mid-aged widow, and many other ladies count the passing-by men on the street, then how a priest can be spared? In short, this story explores the loneliness feeling that continuously challenges the soft and hedonistic part of the priest. And every time he has to remind himself that he is made for God work not for spending time on love and infatuation.

And the remaining stories are mediocre with nothing to highlight about characters and their moods. Even some stories are plot less. On a plus side, Victoria has succeeded in penning down the everyday Greek life associated with characters and the storyline.

Comments

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike. This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r

Kevein Books and Reviews

Search This Blog