Or maybe, one thing about the hidden neo-colonialism of our culture?

Reading A Room with a View can explain us, I think, an Anglosphere phenomenon. It’s the phenomenon of the people born into relatively influential and wealthy countries fascinated with the countries more “exotic” and less influential at once. Fascinated to such an extent that they suppose these countries to be more colourful and interesting, and they are quite dissapointed when the truth comes out to be different. And with this phenomenon of boredom and false expectations, another one is connected.

These countries might vary a lot. They could be Mediterranean, Latin-American, Asian, or even — Eastern-European. But there is one thing which connects them. They are a guise. An escape from the author’s country. A mere background for a drama. A better drama, because a more exotic one. A stage which one could shape to one’s whim, just as the colonists and politicians did.

It is, I would say, the neo-colonial fantasy of the people so privileged that they can’t even see how shamelessly they interfere into one’s life and culture.

But then, where is the difference between this fantasy and, let’s call it, the Forsterian phenomenon? E. M. Forster also wrote about “exotic” countries like India or Italy. And guess what? He wasn’t so careless.

The difference between A Room with a View and all the “Mediterranean fiction” is that the former one actually mocks the Englishpeople seeking experiences and impressions outside their country and culture-circle. It’s a book self-aware of their “exotic guise”. While all the books of, let’s say, Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop or Rosanna Ley, sadly, aren’t.

Or let’s take A Passage to India. The racial, political and colonial tensions are no decorations there, no careless background for the dramatic story of True Love, Family Drama and so on (recalls Dinah Jefferies and snorts). There are the core of the book. It doesn’t make it pleasant, but sometimes, books aren’t to be pleasant.

While The Forget-Me-Not Sonata and Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree by Santa Montefiore are, I would say, an excellent example of the neo-colonial fantasy.

They are strange books. Supposedly set in Argentina, they are filled mostly with the characters of UK descend. If there are Argentinians, then they are rich ranchers marrying outside the country or episodic, stereotypical servants and gauchos, like in Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree. The Forget-Me-Not Sonata is even a better example of Anglocentrism, however. Argentina is merely a background there for a secluded English colony, and all the main characters are English. The Argentinians — or the Spaniards overall — are just servants. Servants who not only clean and cook. They entertain with impressions, entertain with impressions of fiery tango or beautiful countryside landscape. They give a guise, give some emotions to the bored and well-to-do characters. Otherwise, they don’t count, they aren’t important. And the worst thing is that the author probably didn’t intend it like that. The very presence of Argentinians was to be the proof of tolerance and diversity. Montefiore? It isn’t.

And the character of Mercedes, the cook in Audrey’s home, the protagonist of Sonata (Audrey, not home😁), is probably the worst example of such a neo-colonial portrayal. You see, Mercedes is a very stereotypical Latino servant-woman. Kind-hearted but superstitious, sharing her folk wisdom to the English missies. She throws words in Spanish into her English conversations, and she has numerous illegitimate children with random men. These Spaniards. So lusty and unordered. And their country. Who cares about some piece of true customs and history, when there is pampa and handsome gauchos?

So here we are — a safe story about well-to-do and secluded Britons, their kids and love dramas, set in Argentina, but English to its bone, and going back to England as well. And in England we have an aunt and her French lover. Who is a lazy guy having sex with her EvilSensous niece, of course. And we have a boarding school. And there are Gypsies. Roma people? Who bothers with calling an ethnic group with its own name, anyway. All which is important is their colourful carts and life-in-travel, and their gardening skills. An Other could be accepted as long as one is exotic and colourful, as long as one could entertain the colonist and apply to the colonist’s images of the Otherness.

This book (and Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree as well) is not only careless about some ethnic groups, and plainly neo-colonial. It’s also quite careless about all these who aren’t upper-middle class, and it uses non-heteronormative people as a mere joke as well. Remember, gays are half-males in pink clothes, and bisexual people are horny and trecherous.

The both books have a very strange morality, too. Boys sleeping around are perfectly good and normal, and their evanescent affairs do not hinder in finding a True Love. While girls sleeping around are either looking like “porn-stars” or are Evil Bitches using their bodies as a weapon. Double standard rulz!

Also, remember — cheating on your devoted husband isn’t bad as long as you do it with your TrueLover. Cheating on your bossy husband who decides on your kids’ education behind your back isn’t bad, either. Later, however, don’t be surprised when the said husband would be described as an understanding, noble and forgiving one.

The pop spirituality doesn’t help either, especially in Sonata, with ghosts being present at their own funerals and the wonderful kids of wonderful affairs, foreseeing the future of EvilUnhappyBitches.

In a nutshell — if you want to read about Argentina, never ever pick up Montefiore’s books!

Then, what is the difference between “exotic” Latinoamerican books of Santa Montefiore and “exotic” Greece-Mediterranean books of Victoria Hislop?

Oh, I could point several of them.

Let’s begin that her books about Greece are about Greeks at least, and her novel about Civil War Spain — about Spanish people. There are some Anglo-Spaniards or Anglo-Greeks in every book, serving as connectors — and this formulae is quite generic, I would say. But the characters most vital for the books are autochthons, and the action is placed in their countries with no guise of Express-UK-Emmigration. It is proceeded to such an extent that usually, the author throws hell bunch of Greek terms I must google out then. Some description of dishes, for example, would be quite useful. But, of course, throwing “exotic” names without any explanation is easy. Thoroughness of Hislop, however, have some advantages as well. From her books, one could always learn about details of flamenco or Cretan customs, and about the social and historical factors determining the behaviour and convictions of the characters. It is still more “I’ll show you how the life looks there, in this country far away” than anything else, but such an attempt is more sincere than the quasi-setting of Montefiore’s books, at least.

The interesting thing is also how — over the books — the human relations grow between Hislop’s characters. Except for quite simple morality of The Island, the next books offer us the female solidarity and the value of sisterhood instead of Madonna-whore dychotomy. The women — young and old, related or not, sick or healthy — are true friends there, giving help and support to each other. It’s already begun in The Island to reach its top in Those who are Loved where the main heroine chooses the well-being of her friend and her child over the lover who cheated on them both.

The morality of the books tends to be specific, however. In The Thread, we have a heroine who kills her Evul!NaziColaborantHusband with a very unhealthy diet. He was a Nazi friend, so who cares if murdering is good or bad? On the other hand, in The Island we are suggested that an unfaithful wife deserved her death. Wellp, I’m hoping it was to portray more the Cretan point of view sixty years ago than anything else. Overall, however, the values promoted in Hislop’s books are consistent and not toxic. A rich hypocrite abusing her wife and cheating on her is a bad guy. The people reporting their Jewish neigbours to the Nazis are the bads. The people killing the others for their sexual orientation are bad. The people helping the rejected ones are the good ones. The lepers aren’t to blame for their disease.

Some basic social sensibility is the most interesting aspect of Hislop’s books, anyway. Usually, the popular literature uses poverty, social conflicts or diseases as a dramatic guise, adding some emotion to the already emotional stories of love, wars and so on. It’s always nice to feel compassionate and generous cause you are reading about poor, discriminated or disabled people, isn’t it?

Here, it isn’t the case. Whatever drives Victoria Hislop to write about protesting workers, political prisoners, repressed and genocided Jews or rejected lepers, it seems to be more the true compassion than anything else. And it rings so true that for the mere sake of it, I can forgive her the whole package of the Mediterranean guise. Moreover, I should be grateful to her, for her books gave me some knowledge about leprosy and the history of Greece and Spain in the previous century. A priceless knowledge, actually.

You see, as a kid I thought (thanks to the Biblical stories, probably) that leprosy=zombification. I thought that you can contradict it by the mere touch and get sores&bumps&limbs falling apart at instant. And I wasn’t the only one to think like that, I suppose. I dehumanized the lepers and I was afraid at the very mention of the disease. Later, I grew compassionate towards the ill ones and disabled ones overall (and it might have had something to do with the changes in my worldview). The literature, however, would still give me an image of WalkingDeath, including Of Love and Other Demons and the Thomas Covenant series. And then, I read The Island. It was my first book by Hislop and I learnt hell bunch of useful things from it. At last, I read a book where the lepers weren’t some naturalistic token (and it’s very sad to use ill and disabled people like that altogether) or CrippledVillains (Fiona McIntosh and her Destiny, ugh). I read about characters I felt sorry for, and whose life hadn’t been as sad and hopeless as I suspected. I mean, the novel Spinalonga colony is quite a nice place — cafes, shops, gardens, a movie theatre…

Already in her first novel, Hislop made a rejected social group the main character, and she should be praised for the mere sake of it.

Her next works, however, emphasize classism and antisemitism more than ableism. It doesn’t mean that suddenly, her characters become healthy and pretty — there is still place for the deformed ones (in Those who are Loved one of the main characters gets terribly scarred during city riots) and the ill ones, either mentally or physically. But in these stories, the conflict between the rich ones and the poor ones, the privileged ones and the abused ones, is always present. There are the stories of strikes and persecutions, of citizens’ protests and the government’s violence. And it isn’t only the guise of Dramatic Times. It’s the homage for those who were rejected and persecuted, for the warriors of fredom. It always supports the side of the ordinary people, not of those who are happy, pretty and wealthy. Every political and historical reference — unlike at Montefiore’s — is deliberate.

The social problems raised in Hislop’s books gave me yet another important personal experience. I live in the country where nobody gives a damn about the crimes of right-wing dictators like Franco, Salazar, Trujillo, Somoza, Pinochet (…) or the Greek Junta actually. On the other hand, everybody with some social ideas is called a communist. And then, there are those books. Books in which the communists are on the democratic side, this time. Books with no Soviet propaganda justifying cruel dictators and crimes on humanity. I mean, it was nice to read it and to feel that you don’t support the bad side. It was nice to gain a proof that not only in the communist countries the human rigts were threatened. Actually, Franco’s Spain or monarchist Greece weren’t as bad as Third Reich or Soviet Russia. It was rather the level of communist Poland or Czech, or Hungary, and so on. In some moments, it was far worse. In others, slightly better. But, ye know, for some people, as long as the righties rule, there is no dictatorship.

And this thread in Hislop’s books is a mystery for me, altogether. Otherwise, they aren’t all progressive in the most obvious way. There are some atheists and illegitimate births described with no scorn, and Those who are Loved tells the story of a woman military rebel, but altogether, these tropes have been embraced into the western culture years ago. I just wonder who Victoria Hislop is — a decent conservative simply caring about the others and thinking that “Everybody’s better than Nazis”? Or maybe a left-winger who, for some reasons of her own, rarely raises some particular topics? Or maybe it isn’t the point.

The point is that her books, imperfect as they are, are at least more fair and more justful than most of the supposedly exotic and supposedly Mediterranean English-language fiction.