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The Island | 
 enlarge | Author: Victoria Hislop
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.50
You Save: $11.45 (77%)
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 15362
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0061340324
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780061340321
ASIN: 0061340324
Publication Date: July 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: used-remainder mark on page edges-back cover has large tear-corners are tattered-cover has creases-some pages are folded and creased
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka. Just off the coast is the tiny island of Spinalonga, where the nation's leper colony once was located—a place that has haunted four generations of Petrakis women. There's Eleni, ripped from her husband and two young daughters and sent to Spinalonga in 1939, and her daughters Maria, finding joy in the everyday as she dutifully cares for her father, and Anna, a wild child hungry for passion and a life anywhere but Plaka. And finally there's Alexis, Eleni's great-granddaughter, visiting modern-day Greece to unlock her family's past. A richly enchanting novel of lives and loves unfolding against the backdrop of the Mediterranean during World War II, The Island is an enthralling story of dreams and desires, of secrets desperately hidden, and of leprosy's touch on an unforgettable family.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
More than a beach read, great family saga and history lesson June 26, 2008
R. Carlson
This book was surprisingly good and the only reason I didn't give it five stars was that the ending was a bit weak. With a stronger ending, it easily would be a five-star book. A family saga read, the author moves easily between generations and weaves a great plot filled with family secrets and surprises. The characterization is especially good with the characters practically jumping off the page. If you're interested in Greece during the WWII era, you'll learn alot. It's a fascinating study of leprosy and the author obviously did her research. If you like an engrossing read, this one is for you!
satisfying June 18, 2008
Jodi (California)
I loved this book and would recommend it as a great summer read. My one disappointment is that I wish the author had ended the book with more depth. It is a beautiful story that deserved a more thoughtful ending. However, don't let that stop you from reading this book. It's just that the ending came too quickly for me.
Mixed, but worth it May 8, 2008
Ms Simone (Seattle,WA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"The Island" is one of those books that is as captivating as it is aggravating. Whether or not the fact that the dwellers on Spinalonga know all to well that they are going to die is a metaphor for all of us (after all, aren't we all going to die too?) the story is superb, the plot golden, and the journey it takes you on is spellbinding. What makes it so frustrating is due to the fact that the author depicts the characters with black and white personalities and speeds through major events in the story.
The two main characters, Anna and Maria are sisters, and couldn't be further alike. Anna, the headstrong oldest daughter, never gives her family any peace with her selfish demands and her rejection of their simple country lifestyle. On the other hand young Maria, is patient with her sister and like a saint, cares for her father, tends to the house, and does everything perfectly. There isn't an imperfect bone I her body and as a result her character is far less human, as is Anna's for being so purely selfish. People have more depth than this and its sad that Ms. Hislop made the sisters caricatures of 2 female archetypes: the beautiful saint and the selfish vamp.
(There is also a horrible scene of domestic violence in the book and the townspeople as well as the voice of the author seem to treat the at of violence as if the female got what she deserved which is horrific in its own sense.)
My second criticism is the pace of the book. For the most part the pace matches the content, but the very beginning and the very end of the book seem to fly by which is unfortunate because key elements of the story lie in those pages leaving the tale ripe for expansion. Namely, Maria, who goes through many trials and tribulations throughout the story, finally has something wonderful happen to her, and we hear very little detail about it. It is a climax of the book but glossed over which was very disappointing.
Overall, the book left me wanting more, which is both a good and a sad thing. At the end of the day, "The Island" is an excellent read and I strongly recommend it, but I felt the characters deserved more than the author gave them, so much so it made it seem worth mentioning on Amazon. But yes, read "The Island". And if you have daughters, nieces, etc. and give it to them to read as well. In short, "The Island" is about humans triumphing over adversity. The book illistrates in a realistic way how we can live our lives in the face of fear and death and that makes it well worth the read.
 A toilet book with no heart for the demanding reader May 2, 2008
Alexandra Manou (Athens, Greece)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought the subject was very interesting so I bought the book, but was terribly disappointed by the cheesy style of Hislop's writing. Her style is so ordinary, simplistic and in such poor English that it could be attributed only to a very young, romantic schoolgirl. Perhaps a course in writing before undertaking her project might have helped. Being greek, I see how she uses lengthy, stereotypical descriptions of local customs to fill pages. Still, it might make a good film, if the characters on screen are built with some depth (a quality they lack in the book).
A light read you can learn something from April 14, 2008
Jessica Little
A good book with good moral values and an interesting plot involving historic Crete and a leprosy colony. Is it a little contrived? Yes. Does it all work out in the end? Yes. Does it pull at your heartstrings, have at least one love story, feature well-wrought locales and characters that at least once display more than one dimension? Yes, yes, and yes. A "beach read"? Probably. Does it matter? No :-)
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