Good Will Come From the Sea

Four loosely linked stories focused on a group of Greeks who have moved to an island to work the land in the wake of the Greek economic crash, this is a heartfelt, bitter and deeply intellectual analysis of the betrayal of the people of a nation - by the unscrupulous, the selfish and the greedy. Idealism cannot win, it seems, but perhaps, only perhaps, there is some hope and it will come from the sea.

This is a mesmerizing collection of four long stories by the Greek writer Christos Ikonomou, lucidly translated by Karen Emmerich.

Each of the stories is set on a small Greek island not far from Athens-- a setting which might be a subtle nod to the island of Arcadia used as a backdrop for heroic stories as far back as Virgil. Ikonomou transforms the island into a ruthless and unforgiving place where Athenians fleeing the economic and political crisis in the capital self-exile themselves among the locals, dubbed the Rats. There's a deep undercurrent of division between the two types of Greek--the Athenians are referred to as Foreigners, despite the idea that everyone is a Greek.

Each of the stories follows a loose formula which ends in a confrontation between Foreigners and Rats. In the first story, "I'll Swallow Your Dreams," a group of Athenians retreats to the island caves to start anew, having no where else to go. A man named Tasos squares off with a Rat and after his public humiliation, flees into a cave where he is never recovered. The titular story "Good Will Come from the Sea" follows the same premise--a father seeks restlessly for the son he's lost--while the middle story "Kill the German" spins a whole story about the indecision of an invalid named Chronis whether to save a woman from rape, or worse. The final story "Kites in July," follows a young couple whose dreams of owning and running a restaurant are cut short when their property is burnt down by the island's natives.

Ikonomou's stories are about failure, about recognizing your impotence, admitting defeat, making a fresh start even when you have nothing to start with. He delivers his stories in chapters of long unbroken paragraphs constructed as rambling monologues, although they are heavily focused and filled with something like revelation. The narrator of the first story recalls a conversation with his son when he stumbles upon the idea that if you haven't felt like a coward, you won't ever be a man. Later on, hate is compared to the rat who eats your guts in the Chinese basket torture.

The writing is surprisingly funny and can turn on a dime. In the same story, the Foreigners are having a tense moment with the Rats when the narrator suddenly breaks in: have you ever seen fish blasted out of the water with dynamite?

Ikonomou's humor is lucid and fine and independent of mockery or irony. I find this refreshing, not only in that it makes the humor somehow cleaner, more rooted in human nature such as in "Kites in July" when, after losing everything, the characters reach a kind of humble acceptance but are not so enlightened that they don't blow off some steam towards the Rats. It also leaves open the possibility of hope, although hope here is not so much resistance to hopelessness as it is the act of recognizing the futility of your situation and having nothing else to turn to.

Would absolutely recommend to a friend.

Reviewed for Netgalley.

Thank you, Net Galley and Archipelago Books. Ikonomou is a Greek Faulkner!

I will be thinking about these loosely intertwined long, short stories for some time to come. I was awestruck to the point of borrowing his other book, Something Will Happen, You'll See, from my library. Special shoutout to the American translator, Karen Emmerich, who captures American slang in this remarkable book. FIVE BIG STARS

Archipelago Books says: Good Will Come From the Sea is a dirge for the Greek economic crisis and the devastation it has wrought, a profound meditation on the nature of justice in an unjust world. ... a tender and defiant song of loss, a study of poverty's toll on the human soul.

"Sometimes I think, we lost our jobs, our homes, our lives - why can't we lose our memory, too? Why? Why did they take everything else but leave us our memory? Why couldn't they take that, too, while they were at it?
Becoming poor isn’t what breaks you. What breaks you is remembering that you didn’t use to be poor. That's what breaks you."

Good Will Come From the Sea by Christos Ikonomou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich, is the story of a group of young people from Athens who following the devastation brought upon by the Greek economic crisis, decide to get away from the stress and difficulties of city life and relocate to a small, unnamed Aegean island in the hopes of starting over. But instead of starting an idyllic life on the island, they're met with suspicion and open hostility by the locals who refer to the group as Foreigners, and the Athenians respond to that by referring to the locals as Rats.

The novel actually consists of four long, loosely liked stories that each explores the effects of the economic and political crisis in Greece. You might automatically assume that the book is quite political, and you would be right, however, I think the author successfully manages to avoid going off on political diatribes and instead focuses on the individual struggles of an assortment of characters that combined together create a portrait of hardship, desperation, and poverty. But, despite the fact that these characters feel powerless and their hopes and dreams are constantly thwarted by the economic and political situation or by the people around them, you get the sense that these people still hold on to hope, however small, and however hidden.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how it spotlights, through the conflict between the Athenians (the Foreigners) and the locals (the Rats), the internal divisions and prejudices that exist within Greece between the people who live on the mainland and those who live on the many Greek islands, even though they are all Greeks. We see that such internal disunity among the groups of people only exacerbates their problems.

"I remember us staring silently at the sea, remember wondering in my drunken haze how such a crowd of people could stay so silent for so long. Then Tasos said his piece about good coming from the sea because the sea has no memory, water doesn't remember. And I remember him saying that we need to be like the water, too, and blot out all the old stuff, forget the old stuff and make a new beginning. He said we have to forget that what united us for all those years was money - stolen or honest, it doesn't matter - and that what unites us now is the fact that we no longer have that money. We have to forget all that and find something new to bring us together, he said."

Good Will Come from the Sea is a darkly humorous and moving examination of the devastating effects that the economic crisis and severe austerity measures have had on Greece, heightened by the existing biases and social injustices in Greek society that impede any progress towards finding a way out of this labyrinth of suffering.

Hard-hitting and poignant, Good Will Come From the Sea is a collection of loosely linked stories set after the financial crash in Greece. There are some very relevant themes within this book for today's times. The text is powerful in the way it highlights the utter powerlessness of its characters, their despair and ultimately their resilience.

Poetic and haunting, Good Will Come From the Sea will linger a while after the final page.

Highly recommended.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc.

As an exploration of the Greek economic collapse this makes for some pretty grim reading. Set on an unnamed imaginary island in the Aegean, a microcosm of the whole of devastated Greece, four intertwined short stories portray the lives of migrants and locals struggling to survive poverty, corruption and despair. Draconian austerity measures have forced many Athenians to migrate to the island where they are resented by the locals and seen as invaders. The Athenians see the locals as “rats” who maintain the status quo with cartels and organized crime. There’s none of the romance normally associated with idyllic Greek islands to be found here, as the “rats” trample on the dreams and aspirations of the newcomers, often by violent means. After the EU bailout, severe austerity measures were imposed and the human cost of that is exemplified here. The displaced Athenians have been forced by unemployment to flee to the island but are shown no sympathy. It’s a bleak world they have arrived in. The book goes straight to the heart of the Greek economic collapse, and there seems to be little hope – even though one or two of the stories do perhaps show a glimmer and possibly the title suggests that good might come from the sea, as it has at times during the country’s history. A depressing but powerful story of loss, desperation and frustration and a strong sense of just what it’s like to live in a country gripped by economic crisis.