In Katie Estill's beautifully written and riveting first novel, the young American protagonist, Sylvia, grieving over the death of her mother, flees to Greece to begin a new life. In Athens, in a vividly described cityscape, she meets a seductive Greek couple, the painter Ari and his beautiful, though schizophrenic young wife, Althea. Sylvia and Ari eventually become lovers. For Sylvia, the affair brings one revelation after another and draws her into a relationship with her lover's wife, whom she alternatively resents, loves, and attempts to protect. In a powerful and haunting climax, the three become irrevocably bound together in death and in life. Evening Would Find Me is both a love story and a portrait of the artist as a young woman.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The Greek islands provide a gorgeous setting for this m?nage-?-trois intrigue, a first novel in which the love story develops obliquely, but is suffused with poetically described scenery. Mourning the death of her mother, Sylvia Harris, a young woman from Ohio, escapes to Athens to find a new life, wipe out painful memories of her clouded family past and flee the social chaos of America in the 1960s and 1970s. The Athenian world she enters, however, is no less tumultuous. Sylvia meets Aristedes Melas, a gifted painter, and Althea, his exquisitely beautiful but schizophrenic wife. Inexplicably drawn to this passionate, complicated couple, Sylvia becomes Ari's lover and Althea's confidante and protector, emotionally intimate with both husband and wife. She discovers that Althea is Ari's muse, the free spirit that he captures in his most renowned works, shown in Athens's National Gallery. Althea's uninhibited energy is at the heart of her beauty; it is what draws Ari, Sylvia and many other admirers, but this childlike intensity also provoked frequent psychotic breaks that edge her toward self-destruction. The Greek drama quickly descends into tragedy, but along the way, the wanderings of this troubled, sensuous threesome take readers to the marble lions of Delos and the harbor of Mykonos, where Sylvia and Ari make love for the first time; to the black-garbed old women of Kalavrita; and to the beach resorts of the Corinthian Gulf, where Althea dives nude into the night sea. At times graceful, at other times blunt-edged, the voice of this novel is somewhat uneven, but has all the right elements are in place to produce an engrossing story--a seductive setting, attractive characters and a dramatic love affair. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
First-novelist Estills fatal romantic triangle aims for Greek tragedy but produces Greek watercolors instead. Grieving the loss of the mother who took ill during her last year of college, Sylvia Harris, who cant stay in the same place as her memories, has ended up in Athens. Even more haunting memories arrive, however, on the wing of Althea Melas, the beautiful, schizophrenic wife of painter Aristides Melas, from the moment Sylvia meets her in the National Gardens. Sylvias matter-of-fact acceptance of Althea despite her madness ironically throws her together with Ari, and eventually, after token resistance, into his bed. Divorcing Althea is out of the question, Ari maintains, though it isnt certain whether thats because he still loves her or because hes afraid of the wealthy and powerful family who concealed her malady from him until after his wedding. And giving Sylvia up is equally impossible. So the ill-starred trio drift through a series of picture-postcard backdropspunctuated by Sylvias gently lacerating memories of her mother and her continued fascination with her late fathers acquaintance, celebrated Death Row inmate Dr. Sam Sheppardas the lovers slowly acknowledge that Althea, whose near presence seems to hover like a benediction over their couplings, does indeed understand, along with virtually everyone else they meet, whats going on between them. Althea stuns them by announcing that shes pregnant; a boating accident leaves the three of them adrift; a cousins wedding Althea insists on attending has inevitably fatal results. Yet all three sides of the loving triangle, especially Althea, remain inscrutable, screened by dazzling Greek landscapes, even during the most vividly rendered scenes. Evocative stuff, sure; but unlike her celebrated Athenian models, Estill never makes it clear what human reality is being evoked. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sophisticated Sizzler,
By A Customer
This review is from: Evening Would Find Me (Hardcover)
Evening Would Find Me--one hot kiss of a tale by Katie Estill--makes a perfect holiday stocking stuffer, or Valentine's Day gift. Estill's first novel brilliantly portrays a young American who settles in Greece, determined to make her own way. Sylvia Harris, a college grad, still has much to sort out from her Ohio childhood--memories of her mother's alcoholism, her parents' divorce, her mother's death from cancer. Bright, passionate, she stumbles into a love triangle with a Greek artist and his lovely, deranged wife. The sensuous tussle, gorgeously orchestrated by Estill, climaxes in a whirlwind of sex, death, guilt, and redemption. The story takes only a few hours to read, but casts a fine, luscious mood that, for me, lingered for weeks.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EVENING WOULD FIND ME was delicious...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Evening Would Find Me (Hardcover)
I savor good writing and EVENING WOULD FIND ME was delicious. It was spare, terse writing at it's best. I enjoyed the book on many levels.The delineation of Athens, the resorts, and campsites put me there. I haven't been to Greece but have been to Turkey and picked up the feel of the Mediterranean sun, sea and pace. In EVENING I could sense the air, warmth, reflections, smells and sounds. I have volunteered for many years at a residence for 6 men with chronic mental illness, both schizophrenia and bi-polar. Althea was portrayed accurately with the beauty and the horror of such a personality for herself and those who love and care for her. Schizophrenia usually shows up in the late teens. It was clear that Althea, as a child, was spoiled by her wealthy father and learned early how to manipulate people. Cultural differences between Greeks and Americans were always present: the slower pace of life, time to smell the flowers, patience with things for which we Americans have no patience. I also picked up the thread that Greeks consider themselves descended from the Gods on Olympus. I found that too in CORELLI'S MANDOLIN ( a gorgeous book by Louis de Bernieres). The eroticism, Ari's creativity when he's not care-taking, the tension and devotion when he is, Sylvia's inner struggle with morals about devotion, loyalty, and monogamy in a totally new situation and environment are all beautifully portrayed. The way Sylvia's thoughts about her family and early life weave through her mind while living a completely different life in Greece is so real.... so MRS. DALLOWAY.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Images,
By
This review is from: Evening Would Find Me (Hardcover)
The scenes and images in this novel are so vivid that they have stayed in my mind months after reading it-- pictures of a park in Athens, apartments, houses, cafes, the ocean. The story is of an ordinary life slipping almost unnoticed into extraordinary circumstances. There's an unobtrusive poetry in the writing and a keen sense of people as they are-- good and bad mixed together so that the same character is both admirable and wrong-headed at the same time.
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