Reviews

By the Ionian Sea by George Gissing

oanh_1's review against another edition

3.0

George Gissing was a very 19th century English traveller; he travelled with dreams in his head of how he wanted southern Italy to be and when the reality turned out rather differently, he got into a muddle and retreated to his trunk (a trunk! he travelled with a trunk) of books. Rather similar in vibe to Edith Wharton's Where Angels Fear to Tread, except that EW intended to portray the characters' dislocation, discomfort and inappropriate behaviour, and GG may not have. Southern Italy turned out to be neither how GG saw it (in the 19th century, after all), nor how it may have been during the Roman era.