Good Will Come From the Sea

I loved reading this book even though at the time I found it to be a little disjointed. I am still not sure if it is because it is a collection of stories that are all somehow collected or if it is the translation itself. In any case, it is a heartbreaking collection of stories about contemporary Greece. Set during the financial disaster, it is fictional exploration about city dwellers who decide to leave metropolitan Athens in order to start a new life on one of the Greek islands. The city people soon find themselves to be labels "foreigners" by the local people. They are hated by everyone - poor island people who feel threatened by their presence and also by the local mafia gangbangers who see them as another way of extracting money or exuding power by humiliating them all in public. All stories are tragic to a certain degree and some are even heartbreaking. It is a collection of stories clouded in survival and death. However, even the living seem to feel look like dying. They just move one step at the time from point to point hoping to find a meaning to their life. Melancholy collection that is an easy read. Meditation on modern life in a contemporary Greece.

Interesting in places and confusing in others. All in all, I am glad I came upon this book. It left me with indelible word-pictures in my mind.

I wish I wasn't the first reviewer for this, because I feel like other people can do the content of this collection more justice - but I can say it was a dark, but funny, character-driven collection that made me appreciate in a grim way what a tenuous world we live in right now. We see the US and our problems, and then these countries in the EU are dealing with corruption and shortage and bad economies far worse than we are - and yet people have to get up each morning and deal with it. Just like we have fiction here ("Ohio," by Stephen Markley, or "Cherry" by Nico Walker) that explore the semi-suburban rust-belt underclass, this book does the same from the European perspective. I can't say I enjoyed these stories, but they aren't that kind - they provide a look into another part of the world that I would not know anything about otherwise. Any fan of short fiction should at least appreciate them, and I think a good audience for this would be readers who want to think about stories and characters from other than the usual New Yorker type of subjects.

This was a pretty difficult book to read. I loved the imagery though. And kept having to remind myself that this is a Greek translation.

As in an Something Will Happen, You'll See, his earlier collection of linked stories, Ikonomou examines the effect of the world order on the citizens of Greece. The earlier collection focussed on cities and urban situations. But here, he proves that inhabitants of unheralded islands are not exempt. Because of its unspoiled as yet untouristed nature, the unnamed island has become a target for unscrupulous investors who don't care that those already in residence have been self sustaining for millenia. Despite the fact that the group of Athenians who have moved to the island to make a go of it, there are more ruthless forces who plan on making it impossible for them in this new place. In addition, farmers are going out of business by the importation of tomatoes and onions from elsewhere, and as one points out, "Sometimes I think, we lost our jobs, our homes, our lives – why can’t we lose our memory too? Why did they take everything else but leave us our memory . . . Becoming poor isn’t what breaks you. What breaks you is remembering you didn’t used to be poor." Much of the monologue is interior, but the overall tenor is bleak, shattering.