Customer Reviews

Nike: A Romance

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first heard of NIKE on ABC's Good Morning America! It had such great reviews I had to get it. The story is very well written and would make an extremely entertaining film. Flokos has created a wonderful and exciting story around the real NIKE statue in the Louvre. Movie-goers are impatiently waiting for more original stories and will be lined up for this one!!

Wow! What outstanding writing in this novel! Mr. Flokos deserves plaudits galore. This is a different and memorable story told in a beautiful style. The novel has a universal theme and nothing is extraneous, all details contribute to a final tragic conclusion. Nike deserves to win the National Book Award!

This is the book that the phrases "auspicious debut" and "a little gem" were invented for. Flokos is incredibly talented - from the opening sentences you know you're in the hands of a master stylist. It's like reading the first novel of a new Nabokov.

The book is the story of a somewhat pathetic, obsessed character, Photi, who wants to "repatriate" (i.e. steal) the statue of the Nike from the Louvre and bring it back to Greece. He is pushed forward in his quest by an imperious documentary filmmaker who wants to film the theft. The results are both hilarious and tragic, and Flokos writes with the soul of a poet. Bravo! Highly recommended.

Beautifully written adventure/love story about how a lowly Greek fisherman is obsessed with repatriating the famous statue, Nike, to his home Agean island, Samothrace. The story is sexy and written in a very pleasing, comic, and dramatic style. It will make a great movie! Nike got a wonderful review in Publishers Weekly, May 4th which called it "spectacular!" I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a romantic story full of drama and human insight.

This is a pitch-perfect "stretcher" -- a tall-tale for grownups that will spirit you away for a few hours to the cobalt-blue Aegean (with couple of memorable side trips to Paris) and leave you charmed and laughing and talking-up a new literary discovery to your friends. This Flokos fellow is a wonderful, risk-taking storyteller; he walks a high-wire here and never once puts a foot wrong. A perfect summer book or weekend read for those who know that high art can also be unabashedly fun.

I thought that this book started off with a lot of potential, but in the end, I was disappointed. I didn't think it much a mystery. The psychological issues that Mother had were interesting...but not enough so to keep me intrigued throughout. I felt Photi was a great character, but more development could have been given. I was very disappointed with the finale and how Photi turns out. However, Photi is truly a tragic hero and we all love that in a novel.

I enjoyed the first part which promised a light-hearted caper about stealing the Victory of Samothrace with a Greek island setting and bright original erudite wit The pathetic comic hero then takes over the narrative and we delve into deep psychological issues ending in tragedy. This part is also quite good but the change is jarring.

The apparently gormless Photi is the subject of Flokos' "romance." (This is apparently between - take your pick - Photi and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, his Mother, and "Mother," an Amerikana, who returns to create a documentary about the pillaging of the statue by a French antiquarian in the nineteenth century.) Photi wants to bring his ikon back to the island: it means so much to him. (Apparently, too, he wants his dead mother back.) Heavy-handed, half-baked, this book suggests that it is the product of a Katzanzakis wannabe. The skein of male-female relationships focussed on Photi is so heavily Oedipal and really psychologically unrealized that even the lighthearted touches (the village as narrator) are dragged down. Read Katzanzakis. Don't bother with this.