The pain of loss

Yannis N. Fertis | Library | Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia | Sunday 15 December 2013 Following five books of children’s stories and a first crime novel with comic-book elements, ‘Gatter’, Dorina Papaliou takes a significant leap and presents us with a substantial novel entitled: ‘The Essential Light’. When the young anthropologist Louiza Laskaratou returns from Oxford to Athens in 2006, following the sudden death of her father, she is confronted with a mystery: a photograph of a painting that belonged to her family and had been stolen during the Occupation.She soon discovers that the loss of the painting is directly linked to the execution by the German occupiers of her grandmother, the painter Louise Hatzilouka, an important but prematurely lost representative of the 1930s generation.The search for the painting serves as the catalyst for a quest for the truth about the events, whilst also providing the pretext for a novel constructed with remarkable skill, in which the history of Athens, the resistance of its inhabitants during the difficult years of the Occupation, and the mysterious case of the theft of works of art by the Nazis. The novel has two key virtues: its almost flawless detective-style structure and its expressive economy. Through a series of successive narratives and constant flashbacks, the author skilfully pieces together the puzzle, keeping the reader’s interest undiminished despite the book’s length. At the same time, she records the events with simplicity, delineates the historical context with sobriety and the necessary detachment, does not indulge in convoluted descriptions or profound analyses, and the characters—primarily the two heroines, grandmother and granddaughter, are portrayed through their actions without exaggeration or grandstanding.Loss marks both heroines: the loss of their ancestral homeland, Asia Minor, haunts the painter Louisa and is one of the reasons preventing her from leaving Athens and travelling to the Middle East with her beloved. The loss of her family home haunts the young anthropologist Louisa, and she finds it impossible to settle into a relationship. The search for the painting acts as a catalyst for solving the mystery and overcoming her personal impasse.With rare narrative skill, the author depicts, on the one hand, Athens under the Occupation with its hunger, hardships and civil strife, and, on the other, in our own time, highlights the significant issue of stolen works of art. The scenes are exceptional, for example, those featuring the British Hellenist and veteran resistance fighter, the curator of the National Gallery, as well as the constant confrontations with the young lawyer.Dorina Papaliou’s great achievement is that the novel is read with a rare and contradictory sense of anticipation. On the one hand, you want it to end so you can find out how the story ends, and on the other, you wish it wouldn’t end because you’d lose the pleasure of reading it. Without the slightest hint of exaggeration, this is one of the best realist novels of recent years. Source