A highly enjoyable read. With its tight psychological narrative and simple plot, the novel leaves the reader unsettled and brooding long after the final page. The narrator is sent by her mother-in-law—against her will—to search for her husband, who appears to have disappeared during a research trip in Greece. Her reluctance stems from the fact that she and her husband have separated, though at his request, she keeps their unofficial divorce a secret.
The action unfolds in the alien yet stunningly beautiful setting of an upscale Peloponnesian resort. In a dispassionate tone, the narrator reflects on her husband’s infidelities, their past life together, the hotel and its guests, the local woman she suspects of having had an affair with him, and the hollow pantomime of her relationship with her Greek lover. As a foreigner, she is a cynical observer of a land whose beauty she cannot fully apprehend, a language and culture she does not understand, and characters she portrays as degraded through her condescending gaze. While she presents herself as occupying the moral high ground—especially in contrast to the locals and her in-laws, whom she dismisses as superficial and incapable of genuine feeling—the ending exposes her as the character with the most questionable ethics. Her decision to continue concealing the separation from her husband, while also accepting her in-laws’ offer to inherit his wealth, is both puzzling and revealing.
One of the book’s central themes is grief. On the one hand, there is the analysis of grief as experienced by people raised in a Western culture and on the other – the representation of the Greek tradition of professional mourners, grieving as performance, a trance where truth and enactment blur together.
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