I was astonished by the huge success of Louis de Bernières’ Captain Correlli’s Mandolin which I staggered through back in 1994. Many separate passages were colourfully and beguilingly written, but the book as a whole was confusing and over- written, as if the author couldn’t bear to stop. I haven’t read any others since, and didn’t relish reading his latest, though I was encouraged to find it a mere slip of a volume compared to Captain Correlli’s’ adventures — and Christian a very different kind of hero.
A medical salesman, he believes that marriage turns wives into sisters and sex soon dies out, a painless castration. If you call your wife the Great White Loaf with skimmed milk running through her veins, as Christian does, and frequently find her snoring in curlers wearing her nylon nightie with She magazine in her lap opened at the problems page, any lust, perforce, curdles.
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