A House in Corfu: A Family's Sojourn in Greece

I read this memoir out of interest in a particular sort of experience of Corfu, for my own writerly reasons instead of because I just wanted to enjoy a narrative of memory. For my purpose, the books was sometimes evocative and useful. It's also ... fascinatingly and sometimes frustratingly odd as a memoir and as an extended piece of narrative prose. The sentences are meant to be long and sprawling, sure, but sometimes their grammar suffers from imprecision that cannot be deliberate. Is a similar lack of control the reason the main characters beyond the narrator are never developed, or is all that meant to push the house and the landscape into starring roles (the house is, after all, named, unlike the narrator's parents and children)--or show more to act as some sort of feminist pushback against the expectations readers bring to a woman's story of family life? Gosh, I don't know. Anyway, it's kind of clunky but has pretty flowers and yummy-sounding salads and things. show less

So you want a house on the Greek island of Corfu? It is going to take a lot of work...as Emma Tennant's parents soon found out. In A House in Corfu it is the 1960s and Emma's parents have been entranced by a spot at the mouth of a mythological bay. Supposedly, this is the spot where Odysseus came ashore; where Nausicaa took him in. The Tennants decide to build a house they name Rovina. Emma Tennant's romantic descriptions make Rovina sound like a fairytale when it was all said and done, but first there was the initial build where troubles naturally abounded. Water was difficult to find. (The search went on for seven weeks while the family relied on rainwater.) Supplies needed to come by boat from a tiny harbor and hauled up the show more countryside. Then there were the island politics to navigate. The locals used the land as shortcuts to fishing spots. Then there was the one time Tennant couldn't return to London. Because of a military coup led by Colonel Papadopoulos the planes refused to fly.
Tennant pays tribute to other Corfu writers like Homer, Durrell, and Edward Lear.
While I enjoyed Tennant's romantic descriptions, her parenthetic comments and run-on sentences were tiring. show less

In the early sixties, the authors parents happened to be on a cruise around the mediterranean island of Corfu, when they spotted a perfect bay. On a whim they decided there and then that this was the place that they wanted to live. Having bought the land, all 43 hectares of it, they set about building a beautiful house over looking the bay.

Tennant tells of how the house was built, and her new family life split between the UK, and this peaceful idyllic place. As the UK went through dramatic social changes, Corfu still continued the unique social customs that had taken place for centuries, but slowly things were beginning to change in the island. She writes too about the local characters who worked for them and played a part in the show more family's life.

There are no huge or traumatic events here, just a series of events and anecdotes of the life spent on Corfu. It is a nicely written account of this part of the world. show less

charming and well-written. The house in Corfu was built by author's parents after spotting its bay while on a cruise. The house was built on the hillside and for the longest time there was no road to it. The book is the result of the author's many visits with her family. She writes of the beauty of Corfu and its people.

This is the nineteenth book I've read this year that focused on travel. Still, I've not lost interest in this genre. What I liked best about this book was Tennant's descriptions of the water; I finally had to go to the net and see photos of the Ionian Sea. Wow. Exactly as Tennant described: a startling blue. Beautiful.

I decided to broaden my horizons by choosing a genre that I don’t normally read – travel writing. I chose this as its title put me in mind of Gerald Durrall’s My Family and Other Animals that I read at school age 12 and have never forgotten, as it was so evocative. Unfortunately Emma Tennant chose to write in a tense that I found awkward and fragmented and that subsequently led me to give up on the novel. I have spotted A Tuscan Childhood on the shelves and intend to read it as I still wish to pursue the travel writing genre.

Disappointing - written as a tourist - it was more on Corfu, less House.