Dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece

by Patricia Storace

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "Full of insights, marvelously entertaining . . . haunting and beautifully written." --The New York Review of Books "I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint." So begins Patricia Storace's astonishing memoir of her year in Greece. Mixing affection with detachment, rapture with clarity, this American poet perfectly evokes a country delicately balanced between East and West. Whether...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679744789
• ISBN13: 9780679744788
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Stunning, Marvellous Book

I am busy reading this book, in Greece, and came here to try and get some insight and background on the author. As someone who first came to Greece 35 years ago, married an Athenian girl, and have lived in Greece for 10 of those years (we are now "some of the many people who have eaten the seeds of the pomegranate and live our lives in the pattern of Persephone" - six months on our island, six in Athens), I was totally knocked out by this dense, exuberant and very perceptive account of a year in Greece, astonished at the author's depth of knowledge of Classical, Byzantine, and Modern Greek history, and her proficiency in the Greek language, her poet's love of words, her sensitivity. I delighted in the descriptions of familiar places, people, attitudes and the festive occasions and rhythms of the Greek religious calendar, so many of them joyously preserved from pagan times. On virtually every page I learned new facts, gained new insight into things dimly understood, and smiled at wonderful descriptions of familiar situations. I became intrigued to learn more about the writer's background, the source of her fascination with the country, history and culture and the underlying reason for her stay.. Was this her first visit? Has she been back? I would love to spend a long summer evening at an outdoor taverna with Patricia and her friends, learning more about her and sharing that mixture of exasperation and love which is such a common response of expatriates in Greece. Worthy to be ranked with Henry Miller ("Colossus of Maroussi") and Lawrence Durrell ("Prospero's Cell" et.al.) as a literary chronicler of Greece.

A rich and rewarding book

"Dinner with Persephone" is much more than a travel book -- it's a portrait of a culture, a beautifully written account of the author's year in Greece. Patricia Storace lived in Athens and traveled to towns and islands in Greece throughout her stay there. She describes the people, the customs, the festivals, and day to day life in Greece as she experienced them during her year there. There's a enough description of landscapes, archtitecture and events to make an armchair traveler happy, but the book's real strength is its illumination of the Greek way of life. We come to understand the Greek worldview, and what everyday life in Greece might be like. I can't help thinking that earlier reviewers on this page might be Turks or Greeks who took offense to some of Patricia Storace's observations -- their reactions to her book are disproportinately harsh, and their comments indicate that they either misunderstood some of what they read, or didn't read the book all the way through. If every nation had a Patricia Storace to describe its people and culture to the world, we'd understand the reasons behind our differences, and maybe accept them more easily.

Information, Perception, Humor

Lacking any sense of self criticism, a small sector of the English speaking Greek diaspora has found this book objectionable, at least in part. That is unfortunate, because I happen to love Greece and the Greek people and I found this account of the author's year in Greece to be great fun, truthful, thoughtful,insightful, and all the other fulls one expects from an American woman who goes to live for a while in any foreign country, and especially a Mediterranean country. The author gets involved in nearly every aspect of everyday Greek life and her descriptions of family interactions are great. She even includes a description of the MANGAS in his various rescensions. Public utilites companies come in for their share of criticism and scorn, all rightfully deserved. There is a discussion of transvestites and a famous novelist who gets murdered by one of his tricks. Holding the whole thing together is the Greek DREAM BOOK, which one consults to find out what dreams really mean. Their only problem is that they wear out quickly and a new one must be bought. Stamatis is a fascinating character who appears now and then throughout the book and helps the narrator to get a hold on things, to understand better what she sees and hears. He is like an all-knowing spiritual presence who provides meaning when it seems to be lacking. His only problem is that he is usually leaving for somewhere the next day. Toward the end of the book there is a long chapter on Penelope Delta that bothered me at first because I thought it was a senseless excursus, but by the time I finished I was very glad to have read it. Sometimes the book's tone is stridently feminist, but all in all it is great fun and quite poetic.

An excellent peek into Greece by a visitor

I just finished reading this book after buying it for my Greek-American mother last Christmas, and I found the book to be an enchanting view of Greece from an outside perspective. Patricia Storace has captured many of the contradictions of Greece, Hellenism and the Greek Orthodox soul; all while telling refreshingly entertaining stories. To read this book as a critique of modern Greek society or Hellenic history would be a grave mistake...that clearly is not the author's intention. Instead, Storace provides a satisfying and sometimes critical outsider's travelogue which took me back to the Greece that I grew up in and love with all its beauty, strength and flaws. I recommend this book for its light yet refreshingly intriguing approach to life in modern Greece.

asia minor is 100% greek now and forever

i read this book cover to cover at the shore last week, and thought it was marvelous. i'm a harvard educated greek-american, trained in english and schooled in the classics, both greek and latin, born in thessaloniki who has spent considerable time in greece, and considerable time studying and reading poetry modern and ancient in several languages. I was captivated by Ms. Storace's ability to capture nuances of modern Greek culture and language which normally escape the average outside visitor. In sum, this book is a tour-de-force and a must-read for all interested in modern, classical or medieval greece.the book is marred in part by certain errors of translation and of history. There are also constant references to turkish food being adapted by the Greeks, a historical mistake of grave dimension, since as classical and byzantine sources reveal, what we now know as Middle Eastern Food, or Turkish Food, is actually greco-roman in origin and passed on to arabs during the 7th-8th centuries A.D, and to the turks during the 11th-15th centures, c.f. Speros Vryonis, Islamicization of Asia Minor, and David Asch, Searching for Byzantium. Consequently, it is Greek food and greek culture which was adopted by the Arabs in greco-roman Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, in the 7th-8th century A.D. and by the Turks in greco-roman Asia Minor in the 11th-15th century A.D. and not the other way around. The spicing of foods, the placing of meat on the spit to roast, the placing of oil and vinegar upon salad, the making of greek cofee, all are greco-roman foods and methods of cooking and preparing food which antedate the arabic and turkish invasions of the 7th and 11th centuries a.d. We know this because original classical sources describe these facts. Note the western european emissary Liutprand's account of his visit to the Court of Greco-roman Constantinople in the 10th century A.D. (150 years prior to the Turks' arrival in asia minor) discussing how the resinated wine and spicy foods are "inedible." the description of the food in this account is clearly a description of what we know know as "spicy middle eastern food." Obviously, because the Greeks were serving it and eating it in 950 A.D., it must be Greek in origin and cannot be turkish in origin. But of course, this is a common mistake for those unfamiliar with classical original sources to make, and so we forgive the author accordingly.Because of these minor errors, greeks and greek-americans who are familiar with the history and details of hellenism from 1500 bc to the present will be annoyed at times with the author's failure to check and cross-reference various factual and historical assertions (had i read this as a proof I would have easily picked up these errors), but this really is Storace's editor's fault and not the author's per se.Storace has a keen sense of what the loss of the greco-turkish war in 1922 and the exodus of hellenism from asia minor mea