Sofia Nikolaidou, The Mauve Conductor / Our readings (1st year)

Sofia Nikolaidou, The Mauve Conductor
(possible title in translation)

16/5/2012

Book: 14th

A suggestion of Eleni Papastergiadou

The book has not been transleted

Extracts of book reviews,

translated by
Xristiana Vellou

Christina Voumvouraki

In the end, I only learned one thing; regardless of whether you grew up in an orphanage or within a caring family, you are already dead on arrival. Lisa mirrors her father Iasides, who should look like Sougle, but instead he looks like Mauve and particularly like the Russian who has an affair with Tamara, who looks like mamma Benia, who should look like the tireless Billy!!!!!!!! Complicated? Nevertheless, at the end of people's stories, everyone is usually happy. Either through a happy ending or a "happy" pill. Isn't that so dear Lisa;

Christiana Vellou

I liked Mrs Nikolaidou's writing; modern, "hard rock", but with a hidden tenderness as well. The descriptions referring to meetings with the doctor, Mr Psy, are particularly accurate; it feels like she has been to such a setting herself. The mirrored box is imaginative, even loneliness appears different when you look inside a mirror. While finishing the book I am experiencing an emptiness, a sorrow, there is something missing. I would have liked something more impressive for the end, especially coming from a girl who grew up as a tough tomboy. 

Eleni Papastergiadou

Certainly no one chooses their family...She would have possibly preferred someone else, someone who wouldn't turn her childhood into an "extended telescope". The incredibly angry daughter of a father who never grew up.... A gigantic wrath which was nurtured by the unbearable loneliness of his absence [...] no one slammed the door behind while leaving. All they chose were the fiery paths of silence, of secrets [...] they chose Ismene's way, who sacrificed herself to the present.  This is both Hell and Paradise at the same time.

Stefania Veldemiri

The characters were strange, unusual, with lives out of the ordinary. The problems of the "parent-child" relationship, the unfulfilled love, the helplessness of old age, depression, things that we all face at some point, they entered  into the story as descriptions of state. They seemed, though, as unlinked pieces. Like they were written separately, without adding to the smooth or even unexpected flow of the story. I felt no emotion,  identification or consciousness. It felt like reading comments, annotations to those phases, but without the knife actually reaching the bone.

Maria Triantafillidou

A story more "masculine" in its femininity, more "feminine" in its masculinity. Hard. Rather, perhaps an everyday story of the next, tightly closed door. Strictly a personal story. I wouldn't want to be in Lisa's shoes, nor Benia's, Iaside's or Tamara's. I wouldn't want to be in Mauve's shoes either, nor anybody else's. It made me sad... But Mauve was great, this explains the title...