Retro Reads discussion
Group Reads
>
Decision at Delphi October 2020 Group Read. Spoiler thread.
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ , She's a mod, yeah, yeah, yeah!
(new)
Oct 11, 2020 01:38AM
Mod
reply
|
flag
Just finished. I enjoyed it, even with the 'insta-love' and all the talking. There was a scene that jogged my memory as I read it (Cecilia knocking out the pesky cats with saucers of wine), but otherwise I remembered nothing of the book after all these years.Because MacInnes was writing in the moment, she was able to convey the urgency of the situation. The conspiracy she concocted, which was rooted in the events of the day, seemed very plausible. No James Bondian fantasy here, just a 'what if...' plot where the 'good guys' prevent the evil from succeeding.
I really appreciated that the Greek intelligence operatives were presented as competent professionals.
I chose to be amused by the late '50s attitudes re: women. Yep, that's the way it was.
I temporarily stormed off in discussed when Ken declared he was going to marry the photographer; of course women are just there for you to make determinations about when you take a break from hunting them for pleasure! :-( but I'm very interested in the rest of the plot, so I went back to it and I'm pleased that other things are taking precedence over the romance.
Kellie wrote: "I temporarily stormed off in discussed when Ken declared he was going to marry the photographer; of course women are just there for you to make determinations about when you take a break from hunti..."It helped that Cecilia was equally smitten. I'm not a fan of 'insta-love' but I was willing to put up with it, as the romance was just a small part of an engrossing story.
Not my favorite of MacInnes' books (I've read 4 so far), partly because of the sexism + instalove, which I thought was more obtrusive than usual, even allowing for it being a period book. I also didn't find the plot as compelling as a couple of her others.But still, it was an interesting and overall reasonably enjoyable read. I do like the sense of realism that reading books actually written in the time period in question gives me. (Not like, say, Regency romances, which - much as I usually enjoy them - typically have very little to do with what real life was like in that time.)
I definitely like this book enough that I plan to check out other things written by the author.
I liked this book, but didn't love it. It definitely picked up in the last third, but I found it pretty confusing when there were so many political factions and so many double-crosses going on. Helen McInnes is brilliant, though, and she had some great passages.This one, I thought, summed up the way some European countries did (and do) view North Americans (and Brits):
"Yes, the Americans and the British were alike in some things. They were surface people, skimming over past history, picking out the interpretations that pleased them, never digging deep for the truths that could warn them. When they found something unpleasant, they would forget it within six months. They even prided themselves on not remembering; forget and forgive were so much easier. They evaded serious ideas, unless they approved of them. The British put their faith in compromise, the Americans in doling out largesse; by wheedling and bribing, they thought they could avoid ever having to answer the only real question in life: Who, whom? But they had never been conquered, never been occupied, never had their men carted away as slave labourers, never witnessed mass rape, never watched their children being turned into their enemies. That was their great weakness: they had merely existed while others had survived. How fortunate for the cause of world revolution, with all its varied forces remembering the bitter taste of their survivals, that the two most powerful nations in the Western clique should have had no experience in Realpolitik. It would not be difficult to bury them, not when they helped so obligingly to dig their own graves."
I like this about Mac Innes too—that’s she doesn’t evade holding up a mirror to her readers in passages like these. It’s not just escapist entertainment, she put some meat on the bones (to mix my metaphors).
I have heard more than one guy say that about a girl/woman, in my husband’s case it is because he definitely was interested in me the first time he saw me across the room at a junior officers’ luncheon, again 2 days later when we saw each other at a junior officers’ happy hour at the Washington Navy Yard, and by our second date on January 2, he was done for. He did not mean it in a chauvinistic way at all, he really was head over heals. We saw each other first on Dec 7, had our second date Jan 2, were engaged by Feb 2, and married May 1. Less than 6 months. We’ve been married for 38 years. He did not assume anything per se, he just believed in his heart that he had found his soul mate. The Navy helped a little as he was about to get orders for deployment on a ship, and if we wanted to be stationed together in the home port of the ship, we needed the official recognition of the marriage license. But neither of us wanted to be parted (understanding that we would be sometimes as part of our jobs) and it has worked out well for us. So, I do believe coupe de foudrehappens to people. I would not have necessarily said so until it happened to me/us, not even 5 minutes before it did. So, this time around, the “love at first sight”—or at least, second sight—did not bother. I expect it did not when I read this book in my teens, either, as it was a common trope back then. It used to be love came before sex, it sometimes came long before.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I liked reading about different political aspects of WW II. I have Spies of the Balkans in my tbr pile, think I may read it as a follow-up. I was just in the right mood for it just now, flew through it. I know I read it years ago, but the politics of that era and area were exceedingly confusing to most people. I remember making my Dad take me to see the movie “Z” directed by Costas-Gavras and starring Yves Montand. He was a journalist, so he was willing to put up with subtitles for his precocious daughter. It all makes more sense to me after years of reading history, taking courses in politics, serving in the military, and paying attention.
Just finished. I enjoyed it too! Very twisty and lots of suspense. The body count seemed unnecessarily high, and my mind boggled at the resources being thrown around by both Greek intelligence and Perspective magazine, but I suppose that’s all part of the fantasy. My ancestors were in the magazine biz in the golden age, but it was profitable and all, but it’s hard for me to imagine any publisher shelling out all the expenses for sailing across the Atlantic, spending two months in fancy hotels in Italy and Greece, etc. for an architect and two photographers!I liked all the complications of the different factions and their hatreds and loyalties, the double crosses and the megalomaniac plots. I’m old enough to remember the Symbionese Liberation Army and their ilk; people really did talk themselves into these silly schemes for global disruption.
I liked Petros as a character; he played against the “simple peasant” stereotype that a number of the other characters fell into. Only the character of Christophorou didn’t really hang together for me; why did he tell Strang so much, and why give over Kladas’s papers and photos to Colonel Zafiris? Even boundless ego doesn’t seem like a sufficient justification for these actions.
I had the impression that he was telling Ken all about things in order to win him over to the cause, or maybe I just came up with that idea to make it make sense to me. :-)
Abigail wrote: "Only the character of Christophorou didn’t really hang together for me; why did he tell Strang so much, and why give over Kladas’s papers and photos to Colonel Zafiris? Even boundless ego doesn’t seem like a sufficient justification for these actions."I agree with Kellie that Christophorou was sounding out Ken, thinking to sway him to 'the cause'. I also thought that he badly underestimated Zafiris's intelligence. After all, the villain rarely thinks the good guys are as smart as he is!
Mod
I do apologise for getting so far behind, but working our elections (which were originally meant to happen in September) left me too exhausted for a book that needed as much concentration as this one!
I didn't love this book the way I did when I was younger but I still enjoyed it very much. Certainly explains the bitterness some Greeks feel about recent history.
With this being such a protracted read for me, I lost track of what happened to George Ottway. Did he go after his wife's camera & get killed?
Yes, Ottway went to Crete and was killed there. Seemed gratuitous to me, and a bit surprising for such a seasoned hand.
Mod
Thanks Abigail. Maybe meant to confirm the villainy of Christaforou & his cohorts?
Poor Caroline.
Maybe they thought he would still be a threat going forward.
Mod
Mod
The long memories of villagers is something one of my aunts experienced first hand when she studied as an artist in the town of Aubusson in France in the 1960s. There were still people in the town who had been suspected Nazi collaborators and were shunned and forced to step off the sidewalk by other villagers. One woman kept her head shaved, perhaps as a kind of voluntary self-punishment.
