If you were waiting for a sign to take that leap of faith… this, is it.
Carpet and textile designer turned bestselling author, Kathryn Gauci packs everyone’s bags for an explorative and emotional journey across the Greek islands with her new travel-based book, ‘An Aegean Odyssey – a memoir’.
Destinations: Chios, Lesvos, Rhodes, Karpathos, and Crete. Discoveries – endless, and “embedded” in her “psyche”.
Gauci’s “abundance of dreams” mentality enables a sentimental revival of experiences in the country she once called home for six years, the “old Greece”, worthy of any audience.
The author checks in to 2005, Melbourne, right before jetting off to “retrace her steps” in Greece’s beloved capital. While there, readers will board her “treasured” recollections of 1970s Athens where she worked at the famous “Anatolia” carpet company, encouraging us all to “meander” through our own memories – “I can see the studio where I worked… I can clearly see a face at the window … full of the spontaneity of youth. I recognise that face as my own.”
Gauci casts her artistic eye on all that lies under a “dazzling cerulean sky”, preserving the inescapable imagery and “rich heritage of Greek history” that transcends external landscapes and refuses to be lost to time.
From Chios’ “mastic tears” to Lesvos’ Mytilene and its “maze of one-way streets”, audiences will be “zigzagging up the mountainside” in Rhodes before reaching the “pristine oasis” and windmills of Karpathos. As for Crete and its spirit of freedom – “it’s in the air, in their blood, and nothing else will suffice”.
Maps, poems, olive wreaths, and recipes “found in Chapter 22” are just some of the literary souvenirs readers are granted as they witness just how this “archaic and timeless land reveals itself”, step by step, sense by sense.
Five islands, five senses. Immersed in Hellenism and “perfumed” with the “unforgettable scent of jasmine and gardenias”, Gauci’s “copious notes” tell a tale that read as a food diary, pocket translator, descriptive journal, and itinerary all in one. A multifaceted masterpiece with a tone where nostalgia “washes over”.
Relatable travel nightmares also feature in the form of “hair raising non-existent lanes”, “over marketed tourist traps”, “contortionist” toilets, and liberating accommodation escapes.
Legendary figures including “Alexander the Great”, the “Suliot women” and “Laskarina Bouboulina” serve as powerful references showcasing the nation’s unrelenting heroism and identity. In the face of tragedy resulting from several empire dominations, rulings, the Spinalonga leper colony, and the indelible lamenting of the “Asia Minor refugees”, Gauci notes that “forgiveness and love”, and the enduring values of “philotimo” are just as defining – if not more – as these poignant periods.
The omnipresence of “reassuring church bells”, “ecclesiastical paraphernalia”, and the mythologically inspired blessing from Sappho only highlight the themes of time and dreams further – “Like Orpheus, I have visited the underworld today, and returned.”
Layered in “liquid-gold” (Greek olive oil), “blushed coloured apricots”, “wood-fired penirli”, and the “daily catch of the Aegean”, the author’s attention to detail when it comes to colours and textures is sure to whet the appetite of the harshest critic.
Her creative observations and appreciations extend to photography, poetry, Nikos Kazantzakis, Melina Mercouri’s “spellbinding” Never on A Sunday performance, the “folk art” and “shop signs” around “kafeneia”, “mosaics”, the “architecture of hammams”, all the way through to the “picture postcards” displayed on the walls of tavernas.
She invites everyone to tune in to the melody of her mind, though music, her “most constant companion”, where the “immortal voice” of Callas, Haris Alexiou, Dalaras, and Demis Roussos’ “Forever and Ever” echo alongside the “exiled” Mikis Theodorakis.
Arguably the most significant sense explored in the memoir is the tapestry of touch, apparent in all her adventures and interactions with the characters she meets, and with the people she cherishes, especially her husband, Charles.
Meaningful, methodical, and written with “zeal”, the exquisite interplay of past and present timelines ultimately remind us to “savour the taste of ouzo” as life can be “fleeting”, and that “the real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite”.
