One of Cézanne’s friends said the master always began a painting with shadow. He laid down a patch of shadow, overlapped it with another, then another, till all the shadows hinged to each other like screens. That’s what Mama has been doing for me. Connecting the dark bits to make a picture of her life. [loc 2898]
Daughters of the Labyrinth is the story of Ri Gold, a British artist in her sixties. Ri (short for Arianna) was born in Crete and has recently been widowed: her husband was Jewish. She's finding London, in the run-up to Brexit, increasingly unwelcoming, and when her friend Nashita visits from Mumbai for Ri's gallery opening, she points out that there's something 'withheld' in Ri's work. But then Ri's mother is admitted to hospital in Crete, and Ri flies home to see her -- and is shocked when her Catholic mother, half-conscious, begs her 'say kaddish for me'. But there are no Jews in Crete ...
Ri's mother Sophia (nee Sara) was Jewish, and during the Second World War, when the Germans invaded and the Jews were driven out of Chania -- one of the oldest Jewish settlements in the world -- she fled to the mountains, helped by Andonis, a Cretan boy who was falling in love with her. Andonis was also active, as a teenager, in the Cretan resistance, and worked with an English archaeologist who later sponsored Ri's education, as well as her brothers' livelihoods.
Ri's growing understanding of her family's history is beautifully told: her painterly eye, and especially her observations about light and shadow ('every ripple has a grin of dark') add an intriguing layer to the story. Her anger at her parents for their silence transmutes into acceptance and even pleasure at her newfound heritage, and even in the final pages, when the spectre of Covid ('koronia') looms, there's a sense of hope and inspiration. The stories of Andonis and Sara, full of long-held secrets, are grimmer and more poignant: but they survived the war, and became the loving parents of Ri and her brothers.
I read this novel about Crete whilst holidaying there: I hadn't expected to be so moved by it, and it offers a perspective on Cretan life not readily accessible to the tourist. It did make me look afresh at everything around me: at the shadows, and at the light.
The author's afterword reveals the historical inspiration for the novel: it's based on real events during the war, and Padel draws on the work of modern Jews rededicating the ancient synagogue in Chania. I do wonder if her 1940s character Tinu, formerly a Turkish slave -- the Turks only left Crete in 1900 and he's in his sixties when Sara meets him -- is also based on a real person...
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