Customer Reviews

The Grotto

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This is a long, passionate story where life and customs in Sicily and in Australia (in Griffith and Sydney) are vividly portrayed .The heroine is Gwen Harcourt di Marineo, who grows up in Sicily in the twenties. Daughter of an English mother and a Sicilian father, she is taught to feel English and deny her Sicilian heritage. She is brought up to be a scholar by elderly parents whose obsessive love for archaeology and for each other excludes their daughter. As in a Pirandello story, or in a Greek tragedy, fate is always dealing her hard blows, but in true 90's fashion Gwen is a survivor first of all. There is a wide range of personalities in this story and the intricate historical tapestry takes shape through the eyes of them all. Anybody with a dual heritage, whether ethnic or religious, will identify with her perpetual search for herself in this fascinating tale of love, betrayal, survival and harsh reality of fascist times. I found this story fascinating as it captures exactly not the mythical Australia but Australia as it really was and still is in some ways, for Europeans.

This is a long, passionate story where life and customs in Sicily and in Australia (in Griffith and Sydney) are vividly portrayed .The heroine is Gwen Harcourt di Marineo, who grows up in Sicily in the twenties. Daughter of an English mother and a Sicilian father, she is taught to feel English and deny her Sicilian heritage. She is brought up to be a scholar by elderly parents whose obsessive love for archaeology and for each other excludes their daughter. As in a Pirandello story, or in a Greek tragedy, fate is always dealing her hard blows, but in true 90's fashion Gwen is a survivor first of all. There is a wide range of personalities in this story and the intricate historical tapestry takes shape through the eyes of them all. Anybody with a dual heritage, whether ethnic or religious, will identify with her perpetual search for herself in this fascinating tale of love, betrayal, survival and harsh reality of fascist times. I found this story fascinating as it captures exactly not the mythical Australia but Australia as it really was and still is in some ways, for Europeans.