Random Things Tours: The Olive Grove by Eva Glyn

 

The Balkans, particularly former Yugoslavia, as the Middle East as well, are conflict-prone literary geographies. Very often I am nauseated reading books set in this parts of the world which are set in the black-and-white narrow-minded take where the local history should be always bloody, uncivilized and eventually dangerous for the rest of the world. However, there are many authors doing their best to offer a different narrative. Few of them are succeeding.

The Olive Grove by Eva Glyn is set mostly in the Croatian island of Korčula, in the Dalmatian archipelago. There is Antonia that decided to re-start her life as a multilingual manager of Vila Maslina. And there is the owner of the Vila Damir Maric which is an interesting character as well. And there are many other characters in the book which are very well portrayed and do have a level adorable of maturity which resonates a lot with the type of characters I love to meet in books - and in real life too. Most of them do have a way of behaving with the freedom of life thoughtful experiences. Such characters can only be part of equally thoughtful stories. 

One of the story includes dealing with the long-term trauma of the war in the former Yugoslavia, but there are also stories of self-discovery, acceptance, mature love and romance. All told in the slow-pace narrative, sometimes contemplative, sometimes romantic, There is a perfect match between the main two layers of the narrative amplifying each other. This balanced prose was for me one of the most entincing features of The Olive Grove.  

As someone deeply interested in how political events shape everyday life and interactions, I appreciated the thoughtful way to feature the trauma of the Balkan wars into a personal unique story. The author´s approach is elegant and respectful, dealing gently with facts and personal trauma.

The ways in which the natural Croatian setting is described, a place which happen to know more than the average travel magazine descriptions, is diverse and realistic and takes the reader out of his or her reading chair far away, on a beach near the crystal clear waters of the Dalmatian coast.

The Olive Grove is different in some many respects of many of the books dealing with such topics and I can only be glad to have been given the chance of reading it. Eva Glyn´s book is a proof that one can still respect a classical literary canon and write in the most interesting entincing way.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own