A book given to me to read by my Mother and invoking the snob in me by declaring on the back cover it is winner of the Richard & Judy Summer Read - however I did my best to not judge a book by its cover and all that.
Reading the book I was caught up in the multi-generational drama of the tale, but now having put it down I feel the characters were too often archetypal - the dutiful father, the amoral daughter, the rich trapped by pretensions, the poor the salt of the earth. The question must be whether that really matters, this is a good read, it never asked to be judged as a sociological tract nor, I suspect, as literatry "high art" therefore it does all it ever intended.
It is the kind of book to bring the Shirley Valentine is us all, centred around the sea side taverna where we could "drink the wine in the land where the grape is grown", and that is probably enough.
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