The Thread by Victoria Hislop

I read Victoria Hislop’s The Island and now my mother has presented me with The Thread to read as well.  While I enjoyed The Island I completely failed to engage with The Thread, and it was in something of a state of irritation that I abandoned it mid way through.  

Perhaps I should warn you of spoilers ahead but then again one of my complaints with the book is that Hislop herself begins with a massive spoiler. The old and happily married Dimitri and Katerina meet their Grandson and this gives the “excuse” for their reflection on the events of their early life that is the rest of the book.  This device relieves you from the burden of worry at any point within the tale because you already know that D and K will live happily ever after.   

I also found this prologue pointless as the rest of the novel is written from the view point of the omnipotent anonymous narrator; it might make sense if the rest of the story had actually been narrated as one of other of D and K’s recollections - but it isn’t and therefore it doesn’t. 

My other major complaint is that this is the lightest of literary outputs and therefore it is, to me, distasteful that it uses ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust as its window dressing.  It is not that these events can not be the subject of fiction but that such events demand the highest of standards – it is not good enough to be mediocre when you speak of the greatest of human tragedies. To be saccharin sweet is a denial of the reality. 

Hislop over plays the idea that Thessaloniki was this completely happy and tolerant cosmopolitan city where all religions lived side by side, and overlays this with a simplistic dichotomy the happy poor and discontented rich.

I guess that in such a fanciful narrative to question plot inconsistencies is just foolish (like saying that plot twists in Dr Who don’t make sense – but fully accepting the credibility of his time machine) However I remain puzzled that after locating her mother Katerina does not suggest that rather than her going to live with her Mother, who had now married a brutal bully of a husband, her Mother comes to her -her Mother is supposed to be a talented seamstress – surely she would have found ready employ along with Katerina with the Jewish Tailors next door.  

While The Thread is actually comparable with The Island it is the subject matter which forces me to apply a different measure on it, and therefore find it so woeful.