{"id":1223,"date":"2012-05-18T06:19:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T06:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1223"},"modified":"2012-05-26T16:43:48","modified_gmt":"2012-05-26T16:43:48","slug":"the-element-inth-in-greek-by-alison-fell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1223","title":{"rendered":"The Element \u2013Inth in Greek by Alison Fell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Sandstone Press 17 May 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

448pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lost in\u00a0history. Such has been the fate of the inexhaustible and meticulous classicist\/philologist Alice Kober whose devotion to and breakthrough in translating Linear B, the cuneiform Minoan language found on tablets at Knossos, is glimpsed in her unpublished monograph The Element \u2013Inth in Greek.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kober died unrecognized at age forty-three, the same age as Ingrid Laurie, the divorced Scottish academic at the heart of Alison Fell\u2019s new book with the same title, who has embarked on Kober\u2019s biography and is visiting Crete for research purposes.<\/p>\n

Thus fact meets fiction in this genre-busting mix of biography and storytelling, for Alice Kober was a real figure whose heroic efforts to comprehend Minoan were largely eclipsed by a male scholar\u2019s breakthrough two years after her untimely death.\u00a0The\u00a0substantial, intelligent, compelling story that Fell wraps around the facts\u00a0not only pays homage to Kober\u2019s life and work but delivers considerably more: a love story, a detective mystery and a multi-faceted consideration of gender, family and the past.<\/p>\n

When a man\u2019s bloated body, killed by bee-stings, coated with honey and containing narcotics in the stomach, is found in a Cretan olive grove, handsome, widowed local police sergeant Yiannis Stephanoudakis takes up the case. Soulful, with a cat named Terpsikore and a taste for nouvelle vague<\/em> European movies, Yiannis makes a suitable romantic foil for Ingrid\u2019s free-spirited, cerebral yet sensual heroine, their relationship adding a pleasingly accessible dimension to the denser layers of research and scholarship.<\/p>\n

Comparisons with A.S. Byatt\u2019s Possession, <\/em>the Booker-Prize-winning 1990 novel, subtitled A Romance but also a pursuit of knowledge steeped in academe and storytelling, <\/em>seem inevitable. In Fell\u2019s book, the historical, philological and biographical material is similarly delivered with conviction and a degree of passion. The account of Kober\u2019s struggles to achieve her work, her relationships with others in the field and her milieu suggest she is indeed lost from view and worthy of reconsideration.<\/p>\n

Fell\u2019s book brims over with issues \u2013 feminism, anthropology, Greek History and language. The body in the orchard turns out to be an Albanian student with a complex thesis of his own devoted to \u2018redefining masculinity in the prehistoric Aegean\u2019. And let\u2019s not forget love and desire; and bees, whose role is part of a ritualistic mystery involving the essence of the mitochondrial line.<\/p>\n

Possibly verging on the overstuffed, and burdened with an unwieldy title, this genre mash-up is nonetheless something of a triumph. A writer and poet of long experience and achievement, Fell marshalls her material impressively and delivers it in a distilled, take-no-prisoners voice that\u00a0calls for\u00a0the reader\u2019s full\u00a0attention and then rewards it.<\/p>\n

This is a mature, shrewd piece of work appealing simultaneously to head and heart. It may be Fell\u2019s best book yet and certainly deserves to be her most successful. Orange Prize judges, take note.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

When a man\u2019s bloated body, killed by bee-stings, coated with honey and containing narcotics in the stomach, is found in a Cretan olive grove, handsome, widowed local police sergeant Yiannis Stephanoudakis takes up the case. Soulful, with a cat named Terpsikore and a taste for nouvelle vague<\/em> European movies, Yiannis makes a suitable romantic foil for Ingrid\u2019s free-spirited, cerebral yet sensual heroine, their relationship adding a pleasingly accessible dimension to the denser layers of research and scholarship.[…]in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}