CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN Paperback – Import, January 1, 1995

This book is many things. Sad, accurate, remorseful, hilarious, real. The characters are alive and you can feel them in your heart. You love them, feel with them, laugh with them, cry with them. This book is the most numbingly beautiful and energising experience you will have had for many years. Having reread it after a few years it has become more beautiful. The sweep of history made personal is wonderfully written and worth every second of the experience of reading, you won’t want to miss a single word.

So promising initially, but ultimately deeply unsatisfying. The story's pace ends up being all wrong - after taking almost the entire book to cover just a couple of years, the author knocks some several decades into a mere few pages, giving the sense that having taken us on this long, long, drawn-out journey, wehadreallyjustbettergetitoverwith. Even if I had liked the ending (which I didn't), the rush to get there would still annoy me !

Absolutely fantastic. This book has everything, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry. Highly recommended.

One of the best books I have ever read, and I have read thousands. I am not a big fan of novels preferring non-fiction. I particularly enjoyed the author's ability of the to not sentimentalize or overdramatize or mock. I enjoyed the historical context, and now know more about that area of the world than I did previously, and alternatives views of the WW11. The wry humorous most appropriate. I am know reading The Birds have no wings and also enjoying that. What a great author.

Reader - bear with it ... takes a long time for the plot to be resolved. Worth it, though!

Great reading

A lovely story that really does evoke plenty of memories for me of my trips to Greece. The characters are wonderfully rich and you can't help but settle into their lifestyles. The prose is easy to read and the hardships they suffer make this story a real page-turner.

I ordered this book as a gift to my sister, who is enamored of the movie version. She enjoyed reading it.

I first read this book over 20 years ago and told everyone it was the best book I'd ever read. Over the years I've read everything from scifi to horror to romance to comedy and recently wondered if this book really was as good as I remembered, so purchased the kindle edition. I still love it! There's no denying that it's not an easy book to get into. The first 5 or 6 chapters I found as difficult at 40 as I did at 20, however, it is worth it. There's a lot of saddening and moving description of life in WW2, some pages are difficult to read and are very thought provoking. I am so pleased I revisited this book, my advice would be to give it a go but be mindful that it has its challenges. Overall it is still one of the best books I've ever read.

I really loved this book. It sets the scene in the island of Cephallonia around the time of the second World War. The initial chapters are little cameos of the inhabitants. I was drawn into the book from the very first page and experienced some 'laugh out loud' moments! (Unusual for me.) The tale gradually brings the characters together when the island is occupied by the Italian Army and the Germans. It evolves throughout with excellent descriptive passages with an undercurrent of black humour. Differing relationships are prominent throughout emphasising how they are dealt with...how they survive, change,evolve and accept. I have since watched the film of the same book and apart from some of the dialogue which was used, I feel that the film did not do justice to the book. So, if you have not read the book but have seen the film thinking it to be a love story, please read the book and be prepared to change your mind.... Just my opinion of course!

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I love Bernieres' writing style and how he mixes things up from chapter to chapter. On the other, the story takes forever to start, and he tends to dip needlessly into the thesaurus every once in a while, using the longest, most obscure words he can find, which can make it unnecessarily hard-going at times, even for someone with a reasonable vocabulary. I don't normally have an issue with this kind of thing (always keen to discover new words), but given that he's often using these words to conjure a feeling of idyllic, effortlessness in describing the Greek island of Cephalonia, it gets in the way of the vision a little.

Seriously, this must rank up there with some of the most boring books ever written. I can honestly say that If I'd read the book first, I would never have watched the film. This book is so full of fillers, it takes forever to move forward. The author just loves displaying the size of his English vocabulary (which only slows the story down). Sure, there is a very thin thread of a story, but, mainly it's describing life on the island during the occupation. Also... oh forget it. The story was so boring, nothing is worth mentioning simply because the author killed all drama, suspense with his ramblings.

I was very highly recommended to read this book by a couple of people. I was aware of it because of the film. I haven't seen the film. The book was on Kindle offers for £0.99 pence. I have to give it a go at that.One of the people that recommended the book to me told me that it takes a while to get going but the wait is well worth it. Therefore I persevered until Captain Corelli made his debut at 40%. This is Kindle speak. It was perseverance as well. I just was not particularly drawn into the story. All the initial 40% preamble seemed to drag on forever. But I stuck with it, after all besides the guys that had put me on to it there are plenty of reviewers on Amazon that rave about this book.After the long awaited appearance of the captain I have to say it doesn't get any better. I also have to say the last part of the book some 40/50 pages is dire.As I write this review I can't believe I read it. At least the last part I skipped much of just hoping for it to improve, it didn't.I'm not clever enough to fully explain what it is about this book that made it bad for me. It just seemed to drag on and on, never really engaging me. There were a few good bits. But there were so many bad bits.A conundrum here entails. Why do so many people find the book so good? And that sums up life doesn't it? Just because I consider to have wasted part of my life reading it does not mean another will not love it.I only paid £0.99 pence for it, thank goodness.