A House in Corfu: A Family's Sojourn in Greece

By Emma Tennant

Book Overview

The story of an unspoiled island and an English family making a home by the Aegean Sea. In the early 1960s Emma Tennant's parents, on a cruise, spotted a magical bay and decided to build a house there. This book is the story of that house, Rovinia, set above the bay in Corfu where legend has it Ulysses was shipwrecked and found by Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous. It is also the story of the couple who have been at Rovinia since the feast in the grove that followed the roof-raising-Maria, a miraculous cook and the presiding spirit of the house, and her husband, Thodoros-and of the inhabitants of the local village, high on the hill above the bay. Tennant offers us the delights of quotidian adventures-salt water in the well, roads to nowhere, collapsing walls-all hilariously presented. That the house is still lived in and loved, with new generations coming to understand the delights of Corfu, is a tribute to the people and a special landscape which is distinctly Greek. Full of color and contrast,A House in Corfushows the huge changes in island life since the time of the Tennants' arrival, and celebrates, equally, the joy of belonging to a timeless world: the world of vine, olive, and sea.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080506897X
• ISBN13: 9780805068979
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 0.9" x 5.7"

Customer Reviews

A House In Corfu

A House In Corfu made me long to go at once and savour the tastes, smells and colours so wonderfully described in Emma Tennant's book. Her tales of locals, family and the glorious blue sky and sea had me wanting more as soon as I finished it.

A House in Corfu

I was amazed by the negative review another reader gave this lovely book. I would guess that most of us who like to read about a life spent in the sun, do not expect, or want, an action-packed plot! The whole point of living a Meditteranean idyll, where one day slips lazily into another, is that not a lot happens. Or not the kind of things that we would all hate to confront in real life, such as police car chases, broken hearts, or other major dramas. What we want is to be transported to another world and to imagine ourselves there. This book is about being happy - never easy to portray, but Emma Tennant has succeeded. It made me feel a great deal happier than I was before I picked it up. It is also beautifully written.