Just finished reading Skios, a humorous novel by Michael Frayn, which I read through a chapter or so every night. Really cheers you up if you are tired or fed up.
It's full of funny puns. Skios sounds like Skiathos, a Greek island, but also lends itself to puns and misundertandings about skiing.
It's full of incidents which are just like what happens to you when you are travelling - losing your passport, thinking somebody is the cleaning woman when they are not, two local people who look alike, taxi drivers who are brothers, problems getting a phone connection, people who think you are somebody else and you don't like to disappoint them by admitting you are not. Rich men married to call girls.
My favourite funny sentence was:
'Some of those remaining are weeping or whimpering as they wander about in a state of post-traumatic shock ...
falling into each other's arms as they find their loved ones, or even their unloved ones, still alive.'
The ending with the earthquake was totally unexpected. But entirely plausible to me because I had experienced just that - during a speech - with VIPs on a Greek island.
I was on a press trip organised by the Greek tourist board to promote Greece as a tourist destination, to the Ionian island of Kefalonia. An earthquake interrupted the welcome speech.
Ironically, the minister welcoming us in the hotel bar before dinner was saying, 'This island is totally safe ...' (I think he was referring to the low level of theft and crime.)
Then the earthquake shook all the glasses on the table. Everybody went silent. This was followed by a dreadful crash - I thought the lift had fallen down the lift shaft - I'd never experienced an earthquake and wasn't expecting one - everybody ran out - all the Greeks first - without shouting anything or telling us what to do. We journalists continued drinking, puzzled until somebody realised it was an earthquake and said, 'If they are going outside we should do so, too!'
We then stood around the doorway debating whether it was safer to move away from the building in the open, or stand under the doorframe which might protect us from falling debris.
Kefalionia, which had a major earthquake in 1953 and the local museum tells how the Israelis helped.
Coming back to the book - I immediately thought, why didn't I think of writing a book which ends with an earthquake. And since I like comedy more than tragedy, this would have been the perfect plot. But Frayn got there first. Well done, Frayn.
I don't apologise for revealing the ending. Knowing the ending never stopped me watching three videos about the Titanic, nor any film on WWII.
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