Faithful to my decision to keep improving my German as much as possible, I continued by audiobook adventure with a book by the German bestseller author who writes under the penname Michelle Marly (She also publishes as Micaela Jary). Her popular books do usually have as main characters famous women like Coco Chanel, Edith Piaf or Romy Schneider etc. My choice was an audiobook read by the actress Nora Jokhosha.
The main character of Die Diva is Maria Callas, the biggest opera singer of the last century. What matters for this book though is less her brilliant career but her unhappy love story with the Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis. Leaving a marriage who turned to be more circumstantial and business-oriented, Callas was Onassis´ lover and partner for seven years until he married Jackie Kennedy. Callas of this book is mentally and psychologically instable, sad, disappointed, broken-hearted and disillusioned. Although not so familiar with Callas´ story, it looks like exactly how a woman will feel like after being abandoned for someone else and at the end of her career. Left with almost nothing, she died with a broken heart.
As I do not know too much about Maria Callas more than a few facts regarding her love story and a lot more about her career, I cannot evaluate how historically conform the book is. There are a couple of political references as well I have no idea if they are accurate or not, regarding Onassis connection with political personalities of the time who visited his yacht or Greek power makers who counted on his support. I promise to have a throughout look into this soon. Also, the premise that Jackie may have forced Onassis to marry her is very much unknown to me.
From the literary point of view, I am almost sure that it would have take me much longer to go through it if I had it in the print format. The audiobook saved it largely, as the reader´s voice is attention-catcher. The only problem for me was to follow the different timelines. As the story goes back and forth in Callas´ story of the relationship with Onassis, sometimes it is hard to figure out if we are into the present of the story or in the near or far past.
If you are looking to improve your German or to spend some audioreading time, Die Diva is a good choice but do not expect anything extraordinary. It is the kind of bestseller which tries to profile high women personalities raising interest to the content through the popularity of the characters. Most probably once in a while will give more chances to other books by Marly, preferably about characters I am more familiar with therefore able to gauge for the historical conformity.
Rating: 2.5 stars
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