Gorgeous. Intimate. Moving.

This book tells the true-life story of Charmian Clift and George Johnston, a married couple, both of them novelists, with two young children. Having had some modest success with several published novels under their belt, and experiencing a growing distaste for the grim predictability of their middle-class existence in Australia, the couple decide to uproot their family and move to the small and incredibly beautiful Greek island of Hydra in the year 1955.

There they complete the purchase of a house, and settle in, - their new lives rapidly becoming unrecognizable as they deal with massive culture shock and acclimatize to the ‘simpler” and more physical world they both have been longing for - ostensibly the ideal backdrop for the life of a writer.

“Living simply, living in the sun, we are at least in touch again with reality; we have bridged that chasm that separates modern life from life’s beginnings and come back to the magic and wonder of such sensible mysteries as fire, water, earth and air. And, more than this, we have no masters but ourselves”.

The writing is gorgeous, evocative, haunting. For anyone who has ever visited, or dreamed of visiting Greece, I can’t imagine a more fitting read. Charmian’s descriptive prose of the Island’s delights is ecstatic and luminous, including some of the most beautiful and poetic passages I have ever read, and I found myself transcribing copious phrases I want to remember.

“Warm, mad, and wonderful the nights, wearing the soft bloom of purple grapes. The water lapping dark, and a huge mad moon extinguishing behind the shark mountain edges like every dream one ever had. “

Welcomed by the island natives but finding herself connecting more viscerally with a sub-community of expats - most of them American or other European artists, novelists, and other creatives - Charmian, our narrator, chronicles her first 3 seasons in Hydra, with a moving depiction of her joys, fears, hopes, identity issues, struggles with motherhood and the ongoing crippling poverty that come to plague her family’s existence on the island.

Charmian’s quickening disdain of the majority of the “artist” set on the island eventually replaces her sense of community. With sharpening insight, the author recognizes that the beauty, the physicality of the island and the accompanying life-style can not provide the “inner transformation” her strangely-cohesive community of misfit friends returns there seasonally seeking.

“We are here, all together, on the same small island, living more or less the same way, and looking - alas!- most definitely A Foreign Group, variations on a theme of escapism.”

There are no spoilers here. There’s a lot of information available online (and of course you need to read this wonderful book) to learn more about the life and work of this incredibly talented woman.

A great big thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for a review copy of this book. All thoughts presented are my own. ( )