Café Tempest
Adventures on a Small Greek Island
A Fictional Memoir
By: Barbara Bonfigli
Published: June 2009
Format: Hardcover, 312 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9816453-1-5
Format: Paperback, 312 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9816453-2-2
Includes: 28 illustrations, 7 recipes
Publisher: Tell Me Press
Sarah, an American theatre producer, arrives in the Greek island of Pharos, and embarks upon a summer of romance and magic. Asked to direct a performance of Shakespeare's timeless play The Tempest, Sarah juggles her stage production with some intriguing offstage romances of her own. In a timeless setting, amidst the beauty of the Greek islands and occasionally rocky seas, author Barbara Bonfigli's first novel Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island - A Fictional Memoir is a triumph of storytelling, told with wit and a keen eye for local detail.
Barbara Bonfigli creates a magical world that seems to exist outside of time. In the tradition of Shakespears's The Tempest, the novel places magical elements into a near mythical setting. Vivid descriptions of the island and its many colourful characters, form the background to the novel. At the same time, these memorable and well drawn characters are as magical as any from the Shakespearian masterpiece. Casting the production of the classic play, with local people who somehow fit their roles as if they were born to play them, Sarah creates a wonderful world of magic within an island that borders on the mythical itself.
Barbara Bonfigli (photo left) weaves the story of the Sarah's stage production through a movable feast of Greek cuisine. The play within the novel becomes a mirror of the lives of the characters outside the play. Sarah, as play director, casts her characters from island residents, who could have been the exact role models for Shakespeare himself. The author's witty writing leaves just enough mystery, and creates just the right amount of magical transformation, that the island creates a parallel to Shakespeare's world.
In Shakespeare's world, a shipwreck begins that delightful adventure of love and and events that may or may not exist in any other world. Sarah is shipwrecked symbolically herself on Pharos, and the events of the story begin with what appears as everyday reality. The plot, however, moves gradually yet forcefully toward the sense that time and space have become distorted, and reality blends with a more fanciful existence. Romances become more complex as if caught in a storm at sea, despite Sarah's desire for more simplicity in her life. At the same time, the play itself generates its own almost surrealistic existence, sweeping the island residents along in its storm.
I highly recommend the delightful and magical novel Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island - A Fictional Memoir by Barbara Bonfigli, to anyone seeking a romantic novel that features humorous writing and vivid descriptions of memorable characters and places. The novel is a beautiful layering of Shakespeare's magical comedy The Tempest onto a modern, if somewhat offbeat location. The author recognizes the power of love as redemption and to create magic all of its own.
Read the wonderful and romantic comedic novel Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island - A Fictional Memoir by Barbara Bonfigli, and be swept away across time and place, to a fanciful world that time has forgotten. The story is a feast for the soul as well as for the imagination. As a bonus, the fantastic recipes appended to the book, add a taste of Greece that can be enjoyed over and over again. In the end, it's the memorable characters that will linger in your mind, as you sail the islands in your own dreams of Greece.
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