![]() CORPUS CHRISTI is a favorite among my MFA writing students at the U. I left it in the hotel room in Athens, but I liked Perrotta's clean style and generous heart. LITTLE CHILDREN is being billed as a comic novel but it's neither funny nor truly sad, just a story about two limited people who fall and fail in love. Of course I wish I'd brought Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles with me but I was reluctant to overpack, so aside from a Greek phrasebook, a Lonely Planet and a Let’s Go, I only brought three books, LITTLE CHILDREN by Tom Perrotta, CORPUS CHRISTI by Bret Anthony Johnston, and Robert Fagles' new translation of THE ODYSSEY. There is a pie slice of Aegean off in the distance and ancient churches and stone shepherd's huts at every turn. ![]() Fruit trees are beginning to flower here and the hills are green with oxalis and studded with narcissus, wild thyme, and purple anemones. ![]() Yesterday I found a narrow path lined with Byzantine paving stones that threaded through low stone walls overlooking a valley below where farmers were building bonfires of last winter's dead boughs. Sometimes I wander through the narrow cobblestoned streets of the blue and white village but mostly I hike up to the hills. I am presently revising a collection of short stories, and I work every day until I am cross-eyed, then bolt down the marble stairs. I am in fact the only resident of The House of Literature! This is both boring and blissful. ![]() It's winter, and except for a bakery and a mini-mart, the town is shut down-no tavernas, no museums, no other foreigners, as far as I can tell, but me. I was given a 3 month residency at The House of Literature in Lefkes, a small mountain town on the island of Paros in Greece. ![]()
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