The Thread by Victoria Hislop

Autor: Victoria Hislop

Title: The Thread  

Publisher: Headline Review

Published: 2011

Pages: 480

Genre: Historical Fiction 

     Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a devastating fire sweeps through the thriving Greek city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims live side by side. Five years later, Katerina Sarafoglou's home in Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she flees across the sea to an unknown destination in Greece. Soon her life will become entwined with Dimitri's, and with the story of the city itself, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people. Thessaloniki, 2007. A young Anglo-Greek hears his grandparents' life story for the first time and realizes he has a decision to make. For many decades, they have looked after the memories and treasures of the people who were forced to leave. Should he become their next custodian and make this city?

     Hislop is an author to who I have returned a few times before. She has a way of showing places that I have never been to before as if my bare feet have felt the cold dirty between my toes. Each one matriculates crafted to allow the reader to smell the breeze as it goes by without overdoing it and getting bogged down so badly that the story itself gets lost and muddled. They can become an escape from the real world but she always aims to pull at your strings, to let you experience the lives of others for better or worse. This time I was hoping to also get a better understanding of the region's more recent history. Whilst I have read or seen a great deal of Greece's ancient past the last hundred years or so are a bit of a mystery. So as the sun is starting to show her face a bit more here I thought it might be time to go exploring.

     In many ways, this is the story of two people who should have never met. But as so often is the case fates conspires to change lives in ways people could never have imagined. And in drawing these two together their story becomes that of a nation's collective journey and scars that remain to this day. For me, the way she has written these two makes it so easy to fall into step with them. As we start the novel we become aware of how these two find themselves in the present day. So this becomes one of those stories that are far more about the journey than the destination. It doesn't however stop you from feeling every bit of peril these two go through. throughout the course of its four hundred-odd pages, you become bound to them. Their hopes and dreams for a better future are ones you strive for not only for them but yourselves. we also get to see what it means to fight for what you believe in. To have to push yourself as far as you think you can in hope of making a better future. It is only in those moments do we find out what we are truly capable of. 

     This is also a tale of family and how these bonds can either make us strong or tear us apart. But I would say this is not limited to those we share blood with but also the ones we create for ourselves. For Katerina in losing hers at such a young age, it becomes a great deal about the latter. How do you create a whole new life with people from a strange land?  The answer is I suppose that you struggle and fight tooth and nail to create one. So what Hislop turns out is more than just a story of two people, but a more than a little dysfunctional family going through what for them was unprecedented times. I suppose it's what people do when war comes to their lands. They pull those they care about close and strive to make it out the other side no matter how bad things get. And for me at least it was hard not to feel for them. To grow up with them and to want to fight their battle alongside them. 

     Within these pages a great deal takes place, I can only imagine the amount of planning that went into creating this work. But if you are going to create an epic saga of a family you're going to need time to let them breathe and live their lives.  For me, I feel she has pulled this off well. We get to witness their ups and down all the while as Europe is torn apart not once but twice. And whilst these people may be of her own creation the town they inhabit and most certainly the wide events that in swirled it most defiantly did. So as with the best of historical fiction you get this blending of the two, which ultimately creates a tale that whilst it didn't happen to these people I'm sure people of those generations could easily tell you their own stories that mirror back parts of it. 

     So for a book that you would consider to be a long read, for me, it seemed to speed past as I gulped in as much as I could with each sitting.  For some, they may consider this title at times a little over the top or melodramatic. But I feel that's all part of the enjoyment. At no point is she trying to present this as fact. Whilst I can say that I really did learn about parts of Greece's history. I also wanted to be entertained and swept up in the whole thing. And that she achieved in buckets. Sometimes all we need is to escape for a little while into the lives of others. After all is this not why we read fiction. To be entertained and thrilled if only for a little while.