My last lament

Title:

My last lament

Author:

Brown, James William, 1942- author.

Personal Author:

Brown, James William, 1942- author.

ISBN:

9780399583407

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

341 pages ; 24 cm

Abstract:

Aliki is one of the last of her kind, a lamenter who mourns and celebrates the passing of life. She is a part of an evolving Greece, a country moving steadily away from its rural traditions. To capture the fading folk art of lamenting, an American researcher asks Aliki to record her laments, but in response, Aliki sings her own story. It begins in a village in northeast Greece, where Aliki witnesses the occupying Nazi soldiers execute her father for stealing a squash. Taken in by her friend Takis's mother, Aliki is joined by a Jewish refugee and her son, Stelios. When the village is torched and its people massacred, Aliki, Takis and Stelios are able to excape just as the war is ending. Fleeing across the chaotic landscape of a postwar Greece, the three become a makeshift family. They're bound by friendship and grief, but torn apart by betrayal, madness and heartbreak. Through Aliki's powerful voice, an unforgettable one that blends light and dark with wry humor, this book delivers a fitting eulogy to a way of life and provides a vivid portrait of a timeless Greek woman whose story of love and loss is eternal.-- from dust jacket.

Subject Term:

World War, 1939-1945 -- Greece -- Fiction.

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	FICTION BROWN	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION BROWN	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A poignant and evocative novel of one Greek woman's story of her own--and her nation's--epic struggle in the aftermath of World War II.

Aliki is one of the last of her kind, a lamenter who mourns and celebrates the passing of life. She is part of an evolving Greece, one moving steadily away from its rural traditions. To capture the fading folk art of lamenting, an American researcher asks Aliki to record her laments, but in response, Aliki sings her own story...

It begins in a village in northeast Greece, where Aliki witnesses the occupying Nazi soldiers execute her father for stealing squash. Taken in by her friend Takis's mother, Aliki is joined by a Jewish refugee and her son, Stelios. When the village is torched and its people massacred, Aliki, Takis and Stelios are able to escape just as the war is ending.

Fleeing across the chaotic landscape of a postwar Greece, the three become a makeshift family. They're bound by friendship and grief, but torn apart by betrayal, madness and heartbreak.

Through Aliki's powerful voice, an unforgettable one that blends light and dark with wry humor, My Last Lament delivers a fitting eulogy to a way of life and provides a vivid portrait of a timeless Greek woman, whose story of love and loss is an eternal one.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Three youngstersa deranged child, a Jewish survivor, and a singer of lamentsendure the terrors of World War II Greece and the equally savage civil war that follows.Revisiting the Greek culture and history explored in his first novel, Brown (Blood Dance, 1993) devotes his second to the brutal events, both imposed and self-inflicted, in that country during the mid-20th century. The story is narrated into a tape recorder left in the possession of an old woman, Aliki, by a Greek-American scholar researching "rural lament practices." But Aliki, the last professional lamentera singer of dirges following someone's deathin her northeastern Greek village, uses most of the tape to relate the dark events of her teenage years. After the occupying Nazi forces shot her father in 1943, she was taken in by a kindly neighbor, Chrysoula. But Chrysoula is hiding two Jewish refugees in her cellar, teenage Stelios and his mother, Sophia. When the Germans discover themperhaps tipped off by Takis, Chrysoula's sona melee ensues during which both Sophia and Chrysoula are killed. Now Stelios, Aliki, and Takis leave for Athens, beginning a long, episodic journey of love and survival, funded by the shadow-puppet performances they give. Takis, a jealous child of 11, appears unhinged, perhaps schizophrenic, or maybe he's a violent sprite, emblematic of the madness that has descended on the divided nation; Aliki has a seer's gifts in her lamenting skills; while Stelios' role is both puppeteer and conduit to history and literature (notably The Iliad). Events come thick and fastguerilla attacks, abduction, imprisonment, deathbut the restless plot, shifting locations, and heaping up of suffering become overwhelming, fragmenting the overall impact. A respectful but hectic tale of national collapse and grief that falls short of epic emotional resonance. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.