The Sunrise, by Victoria Hislop

The Hare and Hounds October 1st 2015

The fact that we avoided talking about the book for so long and even let Chris W riff about new developments in drone selfies tells you how high the level of eager anticipation was to re-live the pages of The Sunrise.

Neil kicked off by reminding everyone why he had chosen the book in the first place, and what a good book he had thought The Island had been when he read it several years ago.  He even tried to deflect some of the blame for choosing it by reminding everyone that he had not chosen the Louis de Berniere book because Chris W had already read it…but no one bought that excuse, particularly Chris.

Neil’s overriding feeling was one of tremendous disappointment that such a potentially interesting idea, that one town on Cyprus should have been divided and abandoned and maintained as a patrolled ghost town for 40 years, had then been mined so poorly with such poor characterisation, poor writing style and wooden plot lines.  Clichéd personae and descriptions seemed to draw on soap opera style dramas of the 80’s such as Dallas.  Only the fact that the pace picked up in the second half made it readable, but then it accelerated to annoying light speed for the last quarter.  The only redeeming feature he found was that he was slightly more enlightened about the history of what happened in Cyprus at this time, but only slightly, and he found the Epilogue perhaps the most interesting part of the book.

Chris  would have preferred a 30 page synopsis that could have saved him having to read the whole book and found the characters tedious and paper thin.  Somehow he finished it but was still left wondering why Neil didn’t choose the de Berniere instead.

Richard particularly agreed about the characters not even being 2 dimensional, but barely 1 dimensional.  The plot was transparent with the possible exception of the murder of Marcos.  He found it easy to read and reasonably well paced, but at the same time very stilted with the language lacking any precision.  A terribly mediocre book that only succeeded in teaching him a tiny bit about Cyprus.

Mark T had enjoyed visiting Cyrpus and was looking forward to the book until his wife warned him that he would hate it.  It reminded him of reading terribly written stories in Womans Weekly when he was an adolescent !(well…. didn’t we all…..????)

Steve meanwhile wondered how a book like this got past the editorial process and had concluded that it had been rushed to meet a deadline.  He managed to find some interest in the book when Aphroditi discovered another woman wearing her jewellery but was dissatisfied with the fact that this was not properly concluded, and found details entirely unconvincing, such as the fact that the old guys on look out on the roof were never spotted by a helicopter for instance. 

Mark W likened it to a Mills & Boon novel and wondered if it was really possible that the author could also be capable of having written a much better book.  And rather than being drawn into the book he found himself almost perpetually conscious of the author penning a poor work of fiction. Mark also pointed out the potential racist bias that painted the Turks as the villains of the piece in a rather one-sided portrayal of events, which he doubted was fair and accurate, something supported by reviews from Turkish readers that Steve had found online.  Mark found the hasty wrap up ridiculous and was also incredulous of certain plotlines and doubted very much that the Turkish soldiers would have ignored the potential riches on offer from looting a grand luxury hotel in place of poor housing just because of a some railings and heavy locks.

Chris B was not at the meeting but had submitted more positive comments, perhaps partly due to a personal connection to the events described as he had been prevented from going on holiday to Turkey at the time because of the problems in Cyprus.  This generated a little more interest than most others managed in reading this albeit fictional account, but he still struggled with the Janet and John writing style and poor characterisation.

Rob, who had wisely chosen to go and watch a rather more exciting game of rugby in Cardiff and therefore missed the meeting, echoed many of the other thoughts about the book and even drew comparisons with that other much-loved book by the group, Cry of the Halidon.

Neil concluded the discussion of the book with a heartfelt apology for having put everyone through such a poor experience and recommended David Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet as a suitable antidote.

Average score : 3.4