We need to be remembered, we need to have our song sung and Aliki is one of the last to do this for people, she is a lamenter, she tells our story, sings our song when we’ve died. Because she is one of the last, she is asked by a young researcher to record some of her laments for posterity, for history, for the stories.
Aliki’s approach to this request is to tell her own story, her last lament. Aliki lives in northern Greece and she begins with the German occupation during World War II when she witnesses a German soldier kill her father for stealing a squash. People are hungry and they will do whatever they can even if it’s the last thing they do. Aliki is taken in by her friend Takis’s mother, who in turn hides a Jewish woman and her son, Stelios. Takis is devoted to Aliki and becomes jealous of the attention Aliki shows to Stelios and this jealousy uncovers deeper problems within Takis.
When finally, the Germans burn down their village, the three, Aliki, Takis and Stelios make their way through the countryside, trying to stay alive and becoming more and more entwined in each other’s lives. There is love and betrayal, there is hope and death, there is renewal and loss.
This isn’t a happy story but it unfolds another layer of the lives that people endured during the most unendurable of times. And isn’t this what we all want? To be heard?

Thanks Berkley Publishing Group and netgalley for this ARC.

Sad, compelling, and absorbing; In the end it's worth getting thru the pain and memories

What I loved about this novel was the journey that I took. Aliki was asked to talk about her life as a lamenter, recording her story on a tape recorder and some tapes for which a woman would later return and collect from her. As a lamenter, wearing the shoes of a deceased individual, Aliki would enter into a state, where she would compose a chant talking about the deceased individual and their life. It was usually the older individuals who called upon Aliki and then when her services were completed, the body was ready for burial. Aliki thought she should begin her story and these tapes at the beginning and so it is here in 1943, Aliki is 14 and the Germans are living in her homeland. This story is told to us as if it is spoken on audiotapes. It’s a story about Aliki when she grew up and about her current situation, simultaneously.

Her friend Stelios begins to make puppets and he asks Aliki to help him put on a show. The two of them become great puppeteers together and you can feel a closeness between them. Takis begins to act strangely but the two of them don’t pay much attention to him as I feel they are preoccupied with their own lives. The story becomes quite intense as the Germans hold nothing back as they attack the village, for it is time for them to leave and their exit is dramatic. This is a story of itself as their lives are no longer as they were. Stelios decides he will go to Athens. Aliki decides she will go with him and they will take Takis with them. With hearts that are heavy, promises that have been made, and troubles from within, these three individuals wander out into the world to find their place in it. I enjoyed their travels, their turmoil’s and their accomplishments. With lots of conflicts and drama, I liked the fight that Aliki fought all by herself. As we hear this story of her life we also hear how Aliki is dealing with her current situation. I liked this part of the story as Aliki was funny and she had a spark in her. Her life has been adventurous and now, one of her oldest friends is losing the battle of their life. This is not a real sad time in the novel but a time for reflection. Aliki reflects and talks with her friend and I like how the two of them chat and reminisce. This novel was better than what I had expected. 4.5 stars

I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.

Literature at its best! Creative, powerful, and imaginative - this story is heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.

This book was an interesting read, and it was different to hear about world War two in Greece. The story was very sad, but it just didn't draw me in as a reader so it took me a while to get through this book.

Aliki is one of the last of her kind, a lamenter who mourns and celebrates the passing of life. Told in flashbacks, we experience Greece during and after WWII, through the eyes of Aliki as a child, a young woman, and an old woman. Lyrically written, this book evocatively shares a time and place with its readers. Reminiscent a bit of All the Light We Cannot See, in that the book shares a deeply personal and unusual look at the devastation of war. Definitely recommend, especially for those interested in history.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair & honest review.

When this story begins, it is told by Aliki as she records her thoughts, reminisces, no longer the young girl she once was. Beginning toward the end of WWII, this continues on through the years of the civil war that follows in Greece, and beyond to Aliki’s reminiscences.

Aliki is the last of her kind, a professional lamenter in her village in the northeast part of Greece. When someone in her village dies, she is asked – these days by the old families only – by the relatives of the deceased to lament. A way of saying – this person was here, was loved, lived their life and is now gone. Remember them.

A composer of dirge-poems, called mirlogia, chanted at wakes and such. Well, actually, I don’t really compose them. I seem to fall into a kind of state and they really compose themselves and just pour through me like a long sigh.

She’s been left a recorder and several tapes for her to record her thoughts on her history as a lamenter, by an ethnographer who is interested in studying this before history and time leave us with no one to share their stories of how they came to be this person who spent her life honoring the dead with lamentations.

Aliki’s mother left when she was a child, not dead but no longer a part of her life. And so when her father is executed, Aliki, as a child, had gone to live with friends of her parents, Chrysoula and her son Takis. Later on, others join the household in secret, Sophia and Stelios, her son, hiding in the basement, hidden from the eyes of the soldiers always around. Eventually they will be forced to leave this village but wherever Aliki goes, her father haunts her, giving advice, checking in, keeping his eye on her.

The dead never seem to finish with us, or is it we who never finish with them?

This is where Aliki’s story begins, but it isn’t so much what happens in this story as the telling of it that pulls you in. It feels as though you’re listening to the tapes she’s recorded for you, she’s telling you her tale. Sharing with you her story of how, as she grew from a young girl to a woman to an older woman, her life was filled with so many things, emotions - fear, loss, first love, more loss, the ugliness of jealously taken to extremes, poverty, horrid living conditions, hunger, resignation, the loss of too many in her life. And, hard to believe, perhaps, but true – there is even some humour to lighten the darker moments, courtesy of Aliki’s father’s presence.

Heartbreaking, yes, but lovely.


Pub Date: 4 April 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Berkley Publishing

Wonderful story. Grips you from the beginning. This book, set during the second world war, tells a different point of view than what I have been used to. I will be recommending this book to my library's purchasing department.

I read the first half of this but then had no interest in finishing it. It just didn't capture my imagination.

Finally, a proper work of literature. A genuinely engaging, stirring, compelling story, even an educational one. I chose to read this because I realized I don't know nearly as much about Greece's recent history as I do its ancient one. Granted, ancient history is a far more fascinating field of study, not to mention far more favorable to the birthplace of democracy, theatre, fables and so on than more contemporary times, but still...as far as educations go, I prefer a well rounded one. Especially when I can find it in fictional form. Especially when it's done as well as it this. So anyway...this novel set up in epistolary manner of sorts, done via long audio recordings for a visiting ethnographer and tells a story of a young Greek woman, a girl, really, forced to mature all too soon by the extraordinary circumstances, as she lives through WWII and the subsequent civil war, the latter arguably more devastating of the two, not to mention the following decades, which were barely an improvement. Not just a mere history recollection, this is a serious drama, a love story or really a love triangle of sorts made no less serious or ardent by the character's young ages, involving a Jewish boy she helps and her adoptive brother of sorts. The girl ends up an old woman, the eponymous last lamenter, mourning seemingly not just the life she didn't get to have, but also her country's tragic past and not so glorious present (it really only makes the news for its financial woes and involvement in the immigrant crisis). Either that or it's a place you go to have a lovely vacation blatantly ignoring the privations around you with that special touristy characteristic of select vision. Can't find much info on the author, GR only lists one other book to his credit, written long ago and also about Greece, point is the man knows his subject (having lived and worked there for a decade) and conveys his knowledge with skill and poignancy. Not a light read, obviously, as if one would expect much lightness from a war book with lament in its title, but a very good one. Very much worth the time. The sort of book that reminds a reader of what a reading experience ought to be. Strongly recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Oh, how I had such hopes for this novel. A story set in the small village of Crete and then Athens, and told by a professional lamenter, Aliki, should be an opportunity to hear a culturally rich story (from my perspective anyway, as I am not Greek and not familiar with the practice of lamenting). But the narrative style just did not allow that to happen.

Aliki, as a teenager, is an unworldly girl who lacks deep emotional resonance. I understand this because she is a girl interrupted by war and traumatized by its atrocities. In fact, on several occasions, she states that she is too exhausted or unwilling to contemplate the extraordinary events she experiences. These qualities do not make for a good story teller. But for crying out loud, she has no emotional response when her dead father starts talking to her. It's just a simple fact, directly stated, and briefly explained by old village beliefs.

As Aliki travels across Greece, many people tell her their stories of war. The stories should shock, and jar, and elicit an emotional response from Aliki and the reader. But again, the brief narrative style works against emotional connection because the stories are brief, delivered as simple fact, and directly stated. Also, these stories come from secondary characters who the reader does not know or have an attachment to, and Alki shares very little of her reactions.

The novel is titled My Last Lament, but there is a greater focus on WWII than the lament. I understand the reasoning; the reader needs the insight of the past to understand the last lament. But the tradition of lamenting is not universal, and the brevity of storytelling misses the opportunity for immersion and introspection. Very disappointing.