Grāmatas apraksts no Goodreads:

Love, longing, loneliness, and betrayal… sailing around the realm of the heart.

Steering a path around islands of the past and the present, mythology and history, locals and expatriates, refugees and emigrants, loneliness and aloneness, the fragrance of herbs and the stink of prejudices, the stories in this book traverse the multifarious landscapes of the heart. Setting course by Greece – a country filled with the light and darkness of its past, with wounds still oozing from its wars – the stories explore a space that is both familiar, unfamiliar, and uncannily universal: the haunted, multilayered, enticing, and bewitching chambers of the heart. The sutures keeping it together are pride and longing: for mother, for father, for home; for recognition, for acceptance, for love, for truth; for a better world.

From the back cover:

“Wistful and bittersweet: a collection of engaging stories. Stella Pierides does not shy away from depicting suffering and loss, but a distinctive feature of her work is how she shows her clearly-drawn characters gradually making sense of even the most chaotic of lives. She calls upon her Greek heritage and pan-European outlook to tackle themes of youth and age, the burdens of history, and the irrepressibility of hope.”
–Katie Low, University of Oxford
“Pierides reads and renders our soul with the spectacular clarity of the Greek classics and the depth of the world’s greatest introspective writers. Masterfully portrayed characters, whether they find themselves at crossroads or in seemingly everyday situations, wrestle the often Procrustean tendencies of time, traditions, and heartaches, to ultimately glimpse surprising answers to riddles old and new. These eloquent, hypnotic stories translate the experience of Greek expatriates, contemporary hermits, war veterans, daughters, mothers, and many others, into the universal language of a perpetually searching, truth-thirsty humanity. At once actual and mythic, they blend individual memory and the memory of history, to generate a distinct portrait of the European spirit…”
—Mia Avramut, writer, Essen, Germany

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Mana recenzija

Lai gan katrs stāsts ir citādāks, tomēr visiem deviņiem ir arī, kas kopīgs. Vienojošais ir gan notikumu vietas un personāžu izcelsme, gan katra problēmas dzīvē.

Vislabāk patika tieši pirmais un garākais stāsts ‘’ Memory and Lethe’’. Šajā galvenā varone Anna 48 gadu vecumā cieš no demences un tieši tādēļ atgriežas dzimtenē, kur Annu sagaida negaidīts pārsteigums -> vienlaicīgi cenšas risināt gan savu situāciju, gan uzzināto. Pavisam savādāks, bet arī interesants, bija ‘’Plato’s Pockets’’.

Kas likās neparasti, ka vairākos stāstos galvenais varonis ir vairāk vai mazāk veiksmīgs rakstnieks; kā arī, ka viņi mēģina tikt galā ar nesen mirušu radinieku vai paziņu.

Ja vien arī pārējie stāsti būtu tik labi, kā pirmais, vērtējums būtu bijis nedaudz augstāks. To pabojāja ‘’Keeping House’’ un ‘’Heart Failure’’

Sirdij bez šaubām ir savi iemesli.

Vērtējums: 3.75/5