The Bottom Line
- Godquake offers a good way to get to know the people of rural Greece
- Godquake is from a small publishing venture; a good investment in our literary future
- Godquake starts slowly
Description
- Learn about Greek culture by reading a book in which villagers are rendered with grace and humor.
- Love, marriage, and other imminent disasters come fast and furious once the basics are settled.
- The fabulous cover art begs for display on your coffee table. That's because the photo is mine.
Guide Review - Godquake: Life on the Edge - Book Review
Godquake: Life on the Edge is the tale of a small village in Greece that sits on a precarious wedge of real estate on the edge of a cliff. It's one of those places you might come across if you're walking in the Greek countryside and get lost--a small town with but a single business that doles out everything from homebrew hooch author Rassios calls cheap-ero to hair clips and spare bedrooms.
The balance between the little town and its precarious existance is broken when Spiro, a geologist from worldly Athens, comes to study the village's geology and ends up up flirting with local girl Maria. Suddenly the book comes alive, and the world of blossoming love, village gossip, and a clash of traditions--not to mention spreading cracks in the earth--come together in a riotous crack-up like crockery at a Greek wedding.
Author Anne Ewing Rassios is a Geo-Scientist living and working in Greece. This is her first novel, and it's a good one--especially if you're going to spend some time in rural Greece and care about cultural differences. Like giving money to beggers:
"In Syntagma Square in Athens, beggars sit aligned outside the National Bank of Greece, hoping the wealthy foreigners will be generous. But wealthy foreigners never are. They don't know that it's lucky to be blessed by a beggar, and that even a beggar has to make a living. The foreigner looks as if the beggars aren't there at all, and the art of ignoring the extended hand is well developed on foreign grounds."
