THE GREEN SHORE

The Green Shore by Natalie Bakopoulos - The story takes place in Greece from 1967 to 1973, which were the years that a military dictatorship of colonels and generals (the junta) were in power.  It's about the individual members of a politically conscious family, but it was rather slow reading for me.  I liked all the characters well enough, which is amazing considering the stereotypical portrayals of some of the men.  (Not saying the author intended them to be stereotypical - more that I found them to be but didn't mind them after all).  And the women in the novel are so progressive!  This is wild because I remember visiting Greece for the first time in July and August 1971, and I remember knowing that the junta was in power, but not having it affect our visit except for the fact that the country was not a crowded place.  I don't remember crowds of people anywhere - I have a picture of me standing against a corner column of the Parthenon, and you only see a few scattered people in the photo.  Maybe the lack of people was a sign of the junta?  I don't know.  The signs we saw constantly were graffiti commemorating a date.  And back to the women, I remember thinking how repressed they seemed to be in myriad different ways.  And back to the book.  I'm still not sure about The Green Shore - what is The Green Shore?  If the author told us, I missed it.  The cover is lovely with Greek Easter Eggs - one cracked - which I suppose symbolizes the cracked nature of Greek society during the Junta years.  Read it if you have an interest in Modern Greek History and don't mind a quiet-reading wordy story.  Or if you read everything Greek and want to learn more about what it would be like to live in a politically repressed country - I'm glad to have learned more about it.  Here's an interview with the author that I enjoyed:  Natalie Bakopoulos YouTube