Customer Reviews

A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea

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I had the pleasure of making some of the photographs for this book. I met John Keahey several years ago in Rome, we became friends instantly, and now we have both written books on Italy in attempts to explain our love for the place. John's book, A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea, is a great travel adventure--even more interesting, to me, than the original Gissing work he based this book upon. I made one of his many Gissing re-tracings with John last year during an unusually cold period for extreme Southern Italy. We dashed about what had been Magna Greca and lost ourselves in the majesty and romance of Grecian ruins amid the Italian countryside, most times completely forgetting the brutal chill. We re-read Gissing and guessed at his sometimes wandering intent. We studied maps and walked to find vantage points. And it is all magically in this book, all of the vistas and musings and research and, of course, Keahey's deeply held love and fascination with this wonderful country. If you love Italy, history, travel or just plain good, solid writing, you'll love this book.

John Keahey has written a lovely little travelog of his attempt to follow in the footsteps of George Gissing and explore a seldom visited (by Americans) part of Italy's boot, the heel, arch and toe. Gissing was a writer-comtemporary of H.G. Wells and Conan Doyle, and though he is not as well known today as Wells and Doyle, he was considered an important author in his own time. Like Henry James and Edith Warton and other Anglos from America and England, Gissing traveled though Italy and recorded what he experienced.

Keahey should probably be compared to PILLARS OF HERCULES author Paul Theroux as he writes currently, and has covered a part of the Mediterranean Theroux passed through and wrote about. Theroux wrote a copious and much longer book (and I recommend it to anyone interested in the Mediterranean), and has a more pragmatic and sceptical outlook. Keahey has written a short, sweet, and romantic book about a place he seems genuinely fond of and not terribly familiar with, but willing to learn about. I suppose if one is reading before bedtime, Keahey's book may be more enjoyable, but Theroux's book may be closer to the truth.

Keahey's book is a diary of his travels and therefore a bit limited (Theroux actually links up with individuals living in various places and queries them about the local history, etc.). He also seems more focused on the Greek heritage of the area than the Phoenician, Roman, Norman, or Turkish, though he does make reference to Spartacus in one section. A number of decisive battles were fought in the lower part of the boot, particularly by the Romans, and those battles and much other history is overlooked, but Keahey essentially suceeds in doing what he set out to do, recreate Gissing's trip and see the sights he saw 100 years earlier.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mr. Keahey was able to transport me to southern Italy and allow me to view with him the sites visited by George Gissing more than 100 years before. I loved the descriptions of the countryside and the people. I could almost see them myself and now I really want to. From my travels in Europe, I could relate to Mr. Keahey's descriptions of problems that he experienced as well as the joys of the trip. I hope he goes on more journeys and shares those with us.

A cheerful good nature pervades this book, in contrast to the misanthropic (but highly readable) Paul Theroux. It's heart-warming and interesting to read the acknowledgements at the end. (But then who knows? Maybe Paul Theroux in real life is a nice man and John Keahey a bad-tempered curmudgeon.) Sometimes the writing is careless, with "like" instead of "as if" (or am I pedantic to object to that) and with repetitions such the story of Hannibal's massacre of his mercenaries and the changes of name of Crotona. He is nothing like as erudite as Gissing or Norman Douglas, or at least he is more modest about his knowledge, so that you have the feeling of learning about Italian history and English literature along with him as you read. Those older writers expected you to know already about Cassiodorus and the Sybarites. In spite of his disarming modesty I still think he should have found out the names of the plants he saw. "Yellow flowers" is not good enough. For [the price]we should get some more research.
The photographs are black and whites squeezed into half and quarter pages.
It's a combination of biography of George Gissing, travelogue, and history of Southern Italy. The descripion of Naples (the only place in the book I have visited) is good but a little superfluous if you're reading this before a trip to Italy because there is already so much good writing about Naples. More valuable for the intending traveller are his descriptions of such places as Paola, Cosenza, Reggio, Taranto, Metaponte, Copia/Sybaris, Crotone, Catanzaro, and Squillace.

I have lived in my ancestors' medieval hilltop village on the Ionian Sea since 2003, and I never tire of reading about my adopted home; Keahey's book is simply as sweet and glorious as his title.

A hundred years after George Gissing made his trek through southern Italy, which produced the book By the Ionian Sea, John Keahey retraced his route, focusing on a particular passage from Gissing's account:

"All the faults of the Italian people are whelmed in forgiveness as soon as their music sounds under the Italian sky. One remembers all that they have suffered, all they have achieved in spite of wrong. Brute races have flung themselves, one after another, upon this sweet and glorious land; conquest and slavery, from age to age, have been the people's lot. Tread where one will, the soil has been drenched with blood."

Keahey follows Gissing's path and gives his readers comparisons and contrasts throughout, painting southern Italy as it stands today always with an eye to the past. Having a copy of this book, with its rich descriptions of the sea, mountains, and overall feel of Calabria is like having a train ticket next to Keahey on his journey.

If you enjoy Italy, southern Italy, Calabria, travelogues, and/or vicariously exploring a relatively unknown part of the world, pick up a copy of this book and savor your time with it.

An earlier reviewer said that this gives you the feeling of learning Italian history along with Keahey as you read. I know little about Italy and have never been there, so for me this was a good thing. I do think John knew a lot of that history already, and appreciate that he was sharing it with me, rather than preaching it at me. That kept me engaged.

And just often enough he steps out the history and into the environment around him, and those times are magical. He is sensitive to the world around him, and I can see, hear, smell and taste what he is experiencing in those times.

This is certainly a different kind of book, to me, with its mix of history and current experience. I found it a good place to start in learning about this place.