The Island by Victoria Hislop

I read this book whilst on holiday in Crete at a hotel overlooking the island of Spinalonga, which is The Island of this book. I’ve given this book an extra half star because I was “on location” and so the story was marginally more interesting. Overall, I thought it was a very girly, very unsubstantial book.

The narrative follows the history of a Cretan family, two members of which suffered from leprosy and were exiled to Spinalonga which was a leper colony until 1957. I thought the book was poorly researched. It is very irritating to be smugly (and perpetually) informed that the popular misconceptions about leprosy are incorrect without being given any information on the disease whatsoever. I appreciate that I should not be looking for education in a chick lit trashy novel but I do expect at least a half hearted attempt at some background research. A google search would have done.

This book is definitely overrated. I suspect that the high sales can be traced back to our hotel’s gift shop, which stocked thousands of copies of this book and a few bottles of suntan lotion.