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Fiction Natalie Bakopoulos. The Green Shore. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2012. isbn 9781451633924
A June 2012 Indie Next pick, this first novel follows six years in the life of an educated middle-class Athenian family, its father long dead, after the 1967 coup. If at first its prose seems workmanlike, its apparent protagonist, the university student Sophie, callow, the novel quickly deepens, through erlebte rede adding the viewpoints of Sophie's mother, sister, and uncle. As family saga, The Green Shore subtly portrays how the pains and joys of growth and change affect complex relationships. As historical fiction, it powerfully renders the excruciating tension of life under the Colonels, who banned "Western decadence" and freedom of thought. Seamlessly entwined, the two strands reveal much about history, memory, citizenship, diaspora,...