A tale of the mythical island of Saint-Jacques des Alises, full of passion and beauty. The descriptions are magical and the story is worth a listen as the traveler did of events long ago and far away. ( )

A delightful novella, "The Violins" is Fermor's only work of fiction but feels like it could have been non-fiction, such is the level of detail employed throughout. At times this feels a little overbearing, but the way the book accelerates towards its ending is rather thrilling. ( )

This was another serendipitous acquisition as I had never heard of it until I saw it on one of the display tables in Daunt Books. I had been intrigued by Patrick Leigh Fermor’s accounts of his journey by foot, undertaken at the age of eighteen, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul (which was probably then still known as Constantinople throughout Western Europe). These were published, more than forty years after the journey was concluded as A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, to great critical acclaim. I hadn’t been aware that he had also written novels.

This book takes the form of conversations between the narrator and Berthe, an elderly French lady whom he meets while on holiday on one of the Greek Islands. As they come to know each other better, she recounts various episodes from her life, including the time she had spent on an island in the Caribbean. It had been a French colony, and in the early years of the twentieth century was still administered by a French Governor. Berthe had been born in Paris, but after being orphaned had moved to the volcanic island of Saint-Jaques to live with her cousin’s family, acting as governess to the younger children.

She enjoyed a privileged existence there and recounts a life of ease and luxury, passing from one social event to the next. Such Elysian existence can only last so long, and on the night of a wonderful ball held by Berthe’s cousin, social, political, emotional currents come into powerful juxtaposition, and in a manifestation of extreme pathetic fallacy, the volcano that dominates the physical form of the island lurches into life.

I enjoyed reading this novella, although looking back now from the vantage point of a couple of weeks of reflection, I do feel that it might have been a little overloaded with potential crisis. Still, it was engagingly written, and proved an entertaining distraction over a Bank Holiday weekend. ( )

Having read a travel autobiography by this author, I was curious about his fiction. It would have been useful if I had a greater knowledge of Latin and particularly French languages, but this was nonetheless a surprisingly memorable novel - the story being based on the Martinique volcano disaster/eruption of 1902. P.L.F. uses so much description to set his scenes, not wanting to miss out the smallest details; and although there was not much plot to this short story, the Mardi Gras ball, the costumes and fireworks, the characters, and the final devastation all remain in the reader's mind long after the book has been read. Something I cannot quite pinpoint, reminds me of Michael Morpurgo's stories, and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. ( )

The Violins of Saint-Jacques] by [Patrick Fermor] was a novella about a mythical island in the Caribbean with an active volcano. The story is told through the eyes of Berthe, the only survivor of a 1902 volcanic eruption. The author was a well known travel writer and this was his first (and only???) foray into fiction; hence the lush descriptions of everything from the foliage. food, personages, leather goods, etc. The descriptions overshadow a thin plot. 160 pages ( )