My Last Lament

April 10, 2017
In 1943, Greece was under German control. The effects of the occupation were felt for years, as Aliki dutifully recounts onto cassette tapes in her father’s house. Brown’s (Blood Dance) second novel delves into the life of Aliki as she agrees to help a young American ethnographer learn about the Greek art of dirge-poems, though the attempt to teach quickly becomes a study of Aliki’s past. Her life was set by the pace of war and dotted with its consequences: her father was executed by the Germans; she made new friends with Jews who were in need of hiding places; she watched as her village was burned; and then, still a child, she set out for new life in Athens with her friends Stelios and Takis, who would be come her own definition of family. The three travel throughout Greece; as civil war breaks out, they find work as puppeteers, anchoring themselves in the familiar stories of Karagiozis. They find good fortune in friends made along the way. As their time together ends, Aliki is left with a story that becomes her own lament. Though the language is at times too simplistic, Brown tells a beautiful story about life, war, and love.

February 1, 2017
Three youngsters--a deranged child, a Jewish survivor, and a singer of laments--endure the terrors of World War II Greece and the equally savage civil war that follows.Revisiting the Greek culture and history explored in his first novel, Brown (Blood Dance, 1993) devotes his second to the brutal events, both imposed and self-inflicted, in that country during the mid-20th century. The story is narrated into a tape recorder left in the possession of an old woman, Aliki, by a Greek-American scholar researching "rural lament practices." But Aliki, the last professional lamenter--a singer of dirges following someone's death--in her northeastern Greek village, uses most of the tape to relate the dark events of her teenage years. After the occupying Nazi forces shot her father in 1943, she was taken in by a kindly neighbor, Chrysoula. But Chrysoula is hiding two Jewish refugees in her cellar, teenage Stelios and his mother, Sophia. When the Germans discover them--perhaps tipped off by Takis, Chrysoula's son--a melee ensues during which both Sophia and Chrysoula are killed. Now Stelios, Aliki, and Takis leave for Athens, beginning a long, episodic journey of love and survival, funded by the shadow-puppet performances they give. Takis, a jealous child of 11, appears unhinged, perhaps schizophrenic, or maybe he's a violent sprite, emblematic of the madness that has descended on the divided nation; Aliki has a seer's gifts in her lamenting skills; while Stelios' role is both puppeteer and conduit to history and literature (notably The Iliad). Events come thick and fast--guerilla attacks, abduction, imprisonment, death--but the restless plot, shifting locations, and heaping up of suffering become overwhelming, fragmenting the overall impact. A respectful but hectic tale of national collapse and grief that falls short of epic emotional resonance.

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March 15, 2017

Aliki is a self-described old crone, the last of a fading breed of lamenters: professional mourners who remember the dead by composing a poem of the deceased's life. Using cassette tapes left by an American researcher, Aliki is supposed to be recording her laments but instead recollects the story of her tumultuous and tragic life in post-World War II Greece. Brown (Blood Dance) crafts an oral history of "three musketeers" caught up in violent events beyond their understanding. Takis, a mentally ill boy, whom Aliki loves like a brother, and Stelios, a Jew hiding in Takis's house during the war, are constantly at odds. Aliki, forced to grow up before her time, must choose again and again between her duty to Takis and her love for Stelios. The trio move from a rural Greek village to Athens to Crete, using the ancient Greek art of shadow theater to make a living in a country plagued by starvation and guerrilla warfare. VERDICT Fans of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and Jenna Blum's Those Who Save Us will appreciate the complex and intertwined story of three youths haunted by secrets and the tragedy of war. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/16.]--Christine Barth, Scott Cty. Lib. Syst., IA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2017
Aliki, a teenager in a northeastern Greek village in the 1940s, has an innate talent for singing dirge-poems honoring the deceased. After her father is executed by German soldiers, she's taken in by Chrysoula, a neighbor woman with a son, Takis, who may be mentally ill. Aliki grows close to Stelios, the young Greek Jewish man Chrysoula hides in her basement with his mother, and their bond makes Takis jealous. Then their household is betrayed, and violence erupts, forcing the trio into political chaos as civil war tears the country apart and Communist guerrillas roam the streets. Because their characterizations are rather flat, Aliki and Stelios' love story doesn't attain the emotional heights it reaches for; the book's gripping final chapters, however, have undeniable power. Aliki's dry humor is entertaining as she records her life story on cassette for a modern American ethnographer. Full of details on folk traditions, like shadow-puppet theater and ritual laments, Brown's novel should entice readers curious about Greek history and culture and WWII enthusiasts seeking a new angle on the era.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)