The best thing about the book is it’s title

After the beauty and tragedy that is the wonderful Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, I had high hopes for another soaring story. I was disappointed. The characters are rather wooden, and the priggish, tediously religious Rosie McCosh is hard to like or believe. It’s impossible to see why three men could feel lifelong devotion and love for her. Mrs McCosh is repellant as well as quite unbelievable, and the absurd Sophie and her manufactured lexicon is just ridiculous. None of the characters seem real, and the basis of much of the story line, the loves of three boys for one girl that endure into adulthood and through the decades, is quite unreal. Such a fascinating period in history and yet it has been rendered dully. Even the exploits of an air ace are of passing interest only. The brave Flying Corp are portrayed as entitled public school boys, who get drunk and destroy furniture by way of fun. The very occasional switch to a female narrator is pointless and distracting, although the principal narrator clearly found it hard to give the differing voices their individuality. I struggled to get to the end, and only managed it with a degree of exasperation and irritation or, as Sophie might put it, “irritasperation”. If you haven’t read Captain Corelli, read that instead.

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