by Irini Spanidou
Here is a magical, absorbing, most original first novel about growing up. The heroine and narrator, Anna, is a child in war-and revolution-ravaged Greece in the 1950s. Her father is an army officer, her mother a disillusioned and distant beauty. Both come from large families. One of the most delightful characters is Anna's father's orderly, Manolis, who looks after the family and often, it seems, is the only one who truly loves her. It is Manolis who when she gets a crush on a boy at school explains about love: "It's a tumble, love. A person thinks he's flying and all he's doing is rolling head over arse." The army family moves constantly, and Anna is lonely. Her father is unspeakably brutal. When a man lures Anna into the woods and exposes himself, Anna is beaten by her father and then must identify the man for the police. It is an experience to mark a woman for life—and it does: "Women feel shame before sex," she learns, "men after ward." From one of her grandfathers she hears that "marriage can make a man wise. But it turns women's mind to mush." When she shares a bed with a loving grandmother, Anna decides, "People have the same dream when they sleep together." Best of all, this marvel of a book brilliantly conveys the mercurial moods that afflict childhood, and that old theme of growing up seems fresh and vital again. (Norton, $15.95)
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