A Novel About Mental Illness, Family and Love: The Book of Katerina

During his childhood, Auguste Corteau, born Petros Hatzopoulos, remembers his mother descending further and further into psychotic despair. She tried setting fire to the house with him in it, and tried to kill herself with alcohol and pills, yet the hardest thing ‘was the stoniness of her depression, her utter unreachability, the feeling that, no matter how madly I loved her, I couldn’t make her smile, much less get her off the bed.’

When he has suffered his own bouts of clinical depression, he has had to remind himself of the love of those around him.

His novel The Book of Katerina, a fictionalised account of his mother’s life-long struggle with bipolar disorder, was first published in Greek in 2013 and became a huge success, selling 50,000 copies. It’s now being launched in English (translated by Claire Papamichail) by Wales-based Parthian Books as both a paperback and an audiobook narrated by Anna Savva, otherwise known as Lugaretzia of The Durrells.

It was a great pleasure for me to be the editor of the English translation, and so I thought I'd write something about it here to coincide with the British mental health awareness week.

Acclaimed British author Glen James Brown has called The Book of Katerina: ‘a gleefully sardonic novel about illness and family, and how we can never quite cure ourselves of either.’

Although it’s an attempt to understand Katerina’s torments, it’s an unstoppably energetic and entertaining read as with earthy, no-holds-barred humour she observes the saga of her extended family’s ups and downs in the city of Thessaloniki over three generations.

There are fascinating glimpses of the backdrop. At the dawn of the twentieth century in Turkey, Katerina’s poor Jewish grandmother ‘with hair as red as the beard of Judas’ meets a Greek merchant who, a good Christian, agrees to marry the ‘Christ-killer’ but asks her to forswear her true name and lineage ‘or rather demands; men rarely asked for things in those days’.

Thanks to their hard work, at the start of the 1920s they are practically well-off, the children at a good school with piano lessons and foreign languages. ‘And then the Asia Minor Catastrophe happens and they suddenly find themselves in Upper Town, Thessaloniki, without two pennies to rub together.’

After their family dreams are blighted in an instant, the next generation pursue material wealth above everything else – including genuine love. While there are already signs of the hereditary illness that will haunt the family, the narrator also holds the lack of love between parents and siblings accountable for many of their problems.

‘When four siblings out of four end up on medication by the age of forty,’ says Katerina, ‘something very bad must have happened during their childhood.’

She then seems to take things to the other extreme, smothering her own son with love as he is growing up, to the detriment of her marriage.

It was years after his mother’s death that Auguste decided he had to write the book as a kind of love letter to his mother, recreating her as a fictional character. It opens with the scene when he found her dead, stark naked on her bed, having committed suicide. He was in his early twenties when his mother took her life following years of struggling with mental health issues.

She says, ‘I’m giving Petros the biggest gift within my powers: I shall release him from the lifelong duty of nursing a mother who’s constantly deteriorating, spare him the years of dementia that are sure to come… I know this will destroy him, that he’ll need years and years to recover from the blow…’ And then she takes 400 pills.

No wonder that when the book was adapted for the stage, the play left the audience in tears.

When he decided to write the book, he says:

‘I had to recall the exact timbre of her humour, the fieriness of her fury, her tenderness and her despair. It was indeed cathartic, but also painful – which is why I wrote the book in white heat, over a couple of frantic weeks.

‘Back when I wrote the book, it seemed to me way too bleak to be enjoyable. But it turns out I was wrong.’

The Book of Katerina – Parthian Books

The author will be presenting the book at the Mani Literary Festival in October.

Greek Author Auguste Corteau Breaks into the World Market (greekreporter.com)

From my winter notebook

It was about this day in late April that I first came to live on Tilos ten years ago. Ten years! That amazes me, but what’s really amazing is that the joy and excitement haven’t worn off. I no longer see things the way I did as a newcomer, but perhaps more than ever I feel awe and contentment with my life on a Greek island. 

I’ve been especially grateful this winter that I made it a priority to find a place I love, and one where I can continue learning every day. 

It has felt like a true taste of small island life. With travel impossible, this has been the first winter that many of us have spent entirely on the island. But it’s hard to believe I’ve done so much within this little area of land. It just shows, 64 square kilometres can be plenty, particularly when you have much of it to yourself.

My last trip off the island was thanks to the ongoing Brexit-related paperwork saga exacerbated by Covid. I needed passport photos, and the nearest option is Rhodes. At first I leapt at the excitement of travel, though of course I could only go for the day.

With the end of December deadline looming, I had to take a ferry that left at 3am during such a fierce storm the ferry couldn’t dock on first attempt. The rain turned the streets to rivers and it was still dark when I arrived, and even the harbour cafe wasn’t allowed to have people stay inside. A kind taxi driver insisted he take me somewhere, so I spent an hour or so walking very slowly around a supermarket that opened at 7am to kill time and stay dry, my glasses fogging up thanks to the mask. I finally got the photos – though have since been informed there’s an error and because the deadline has now passed I have to start again following a different procedure. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise, given how I look in those photos…

And of course, since then I’ve been on Tilos. 

Looking through the photos I've taken since January, I’m reminded of so many joyful moments… The bright moon about to come up over the mountain, seas varying from flat calm to crashing waves, flowers from narcissus and anemones and cyclamen to irises and Bermuda buttercups and freesias, my hair blown about in fierce winds, my skin red from cold seas, the spanakopita I made, the fig and vine leaves starting to return.

I’m thankful that all those years ago I started working for myself from home, and I had some nice editing projects to keep me occupied. One of my challenges over the winter was writing an article for The Guardian to promote Wild Abandon, re-writing and re-writing it as the circumstances surrounding travel changed, until I was sick of it - then being delighted when I finally got it right and it came out. I also did some new writing, and re-released Meeting Mr Kim on Kindle, and had an exciting email exchange with its new Bulgarian publisher.

 

Exploring the old terraces on the hills around my house several times a week with Lisa when the weather was cool or cloudy, I learned more about the flowers, especially the bee orchids. One afternoon, I found an injured hoopoe, a tiny bat and - thanks to Lisa leading me in a direction I wouldn't have taken otherwise - a tortoise. 

I’ve also become more familiar with the scattered ruins: cave shelters and houses and cisterns, the various chapels with their crumbling frescoes and ancient marble and wall markings. While Lisa hunted for rabbits, I kept my eyes to the ground for fragments of pottery with interesting markings. And one day I found a fine cup half-buried in earth, which was confirmed as Hellenistic – third century BC – by our visiting archaeologist and excavated for the new museum that’s still being built. (I’m not allowed to post a photo of the finding.)

I remember back in February walking a little way up the hill with Lisa, but turning back after a short time because the winds were too fierce and cold. When I returned to my house, I saw something unusual on the road. It was the heavy, iron, bird-shaped device that is usually attached to the top of my neighbour Sotiris’ chimney, and apparently it hadn’t been attached well enough. I wondered what might have happened if it had come flying at me. I told him it could have dented his car, and he took to parking the car in the field behind my house. 

Another day, the winds were so wild and cold, they stripped the leaves off plants and young trees here at the north end of the island. The snails and caterpillars meanwhile have done a fine job of removing the leaves off many of the vegetables. 

More recently we had a few days of Saharan dust covering the sky, along with plagues of insects, power cuts, and earth tremors – ‘moderate’ rumblings and shakings from a point between here and Nisyros, continuing for much of April. Antonis said in his seventy years on Tilos he’s never known anything like it. It's getting so I can tell how big they are (I think that last one was only a 3). There’s never a dull moment.

A couple of days ago, the sky was so clear, Nisyros and Kos and Kalymnos and Turkey were all visible on the horizon. Turning to take the road south, I walked past fields of blue cornflowers and oregano almost ready to flower. A thin black snake rippled across the road. Then I heard a distinctive breathy whistle, like a whip cutting through the air – bee-eaters? Sure enough, as I followed the track above the lush fields of Eristos, one flashed past me, close enough to see its black beak, its bright yellow and orange and metallic green-blue feathers.

The hillsides all had a bright yellow sheen amid the deep green from the spiny broom flowers. Halki and even Karpathos were clear on the deep blue horizon as I walked down to Ayios Petros. I swam with mask and snorkel and saw a small group of needlefish hanging in the water, curving their bodies into sickle-shapes and changing colour. When I looked up, a cormorant flapped away.

We’re heading into Greek Easter week and towards the celebration of May the First. Attempting a late afternoon walk on the familiar hillsides, it felt too hot to wear the long trousers necessary for wading through the thorny, prickly bushes – and I no longer needed to gather kindling for my woodburner, which I lit every night of winter. Bees were buzzing around the flowers, and I felt my chest tightening in what must have been an allergic reaction to some plant, so I came back, and instead went for my second swim of the day and watched a small moray raise its head and neck out of a hole in a rock.

Then I sat outside and watched a glowing sun sink towards the lower slopes of the mountain.

The Day the Blue Palm Went Down

 

Early in December, the days were a dose of pure tranquillity.

I worked until late in the evening, the wood burner with its new chimney making the kitchen cosy. When I stepped outside before going to bed, I noticed it wasn’t really cold, and stars shone brightly in the sky. It was completely quiet.

Sometime after seven in the morning, my dog Lisa tiptoed through to my bedroom to say hello. The cat, locked in the kitchen overnight as it still couldn’t be trusted not to leap up and scratch or bite, started crying for food. There was plenty of food in the house for them and for me too, apple cake, fresh bread, a brick of feta and a cornucopia of vegetables, so no need to go shopping. At lunchtime I had a long walk to Eristos with Lisa, meandering in sunshine down tracks with the mellow greens of bushes and trees in every direction. At the beach, a few other people were enjoying the balmy day, but so distant I couldn’t even make out who they were; at this time of year, there are no strangers. Most locals were in various stages of the olive harvest. On the way back I waved to anyone I passed, and otherwise let my thoughts wander.

I worked late again, finishing off the edit of one book in preparation for starting another. My work is editing books, often travel and adventure, and I’d taken on more than usual since I’d have to stay at home rather than travel to other islands as I like to do in winter. This year, I was very happy on my little island, travelling through books. In the morning, the client hadn’t yet sent the file I was due to start on, giving me a blessed excuse for a lazy morning.

After coffee and emails, I went out into the sunshine in my wellies to do some weeding of my vegetable patches and thin out some seedlings. Maybe I’d get a few jobs done around the garden and enjoy the day. I noticed the fishing boat that had been out at sea had now come into the harbour. A little while later I heard a truck pass, and then reverse, and knew that a moment later I’d hear Nikos the fisherman shouting, ‘Jennifer!’ while Lisa erupted in a cacophony of barking. I bought a couple of kilos of fresh sardines. I’d grill a few later in a little olive oil.

It wasn’t long after, around midday, when I heard a vehicle approach from the other direction; I looked up and saw a flatbed truck loaded with logs. A week or so earlier, I’d heard that Yorgos was offering good firewood, and said I’d take a truckload. Yorgos, in his late fifties, usually lived on Rhodes and worked in tourism, but given the lack of work this year he’d come to Tilos and started taking care of his parents’ long-neglected land, which had hundreds of trees, some very old. I was happy to see the field being worked and the little house restored, and Yorgos was always very friendly. The firewood would top up my supply and prepare me for January and February. I was therefore delighted when Yorgos arrived with Kostas and the wood. They told me to open up the gate so that Kostas could back his truck in. It wouldn’t open all the way because of the palm tree, but I did my best.

I inherited several palms when I bought my house two years earlier, and three of this shorter type, which grow to just over the height of a person, originally stood by the gate. Because the house had been empty for five years, they’d encroached onto the path and gate, causing some damage. I’d managed to wrangle the smallest out of the ground, which had taken me several days of battling half an hour at a time. The trunk of the largest one had assumed a surreal shade of bright blue since Dinos spray-painted the gate. Because of the blue palm, I didn’t think Kostas’ truck could get very far, but Yorgos gave expert instructions and, with just a whisker of spare room on either side as I held the gate, Kostas managed to back the truck into the garden.

Kostas has dark hair and eyes and a cheeky boyish smile that lights up his face. Not that I would normally have noticed, of course, but he’s quite alluring to watch when showing off his traditional dance skills at summer festivals. An opportunity to help out his mate on a sunny day by making a delivery to an appreciative female was probably too good to miss. And there I was in dirty old clothes and wellies and probably mud on my nose or grass in my unbrushed hair, more likely both. It was amusing as together we all threw logs and banter here and there.

‘In the winter we work! In the summer we dance! Have I danced with you yet? How’ve you escaped me? You’ve probably always got company…’

I retorted wryly that he was the one who always had plenty of company. He grinned and then, ducking under the overhanging palm branches, changed the subject.

‘That needs pruning,’ he said, and when I agreed, he whipped out a saw from his truck and cut the palm branches back, nonchalantly sliding the pruning saw into his back pocket afterwards. I thanked him and added, smiling, that maybe he could cut down the whole tree. It probably needed to go at some point.

‘You need a chainsaw for that. Stelios has got one. He’s got a big one,’ he said, winking at Yorgos. He walked back to the truck, grabbed a few heavy logs and added emphatically, ‘We work with our hands.’

The innuendo was being laid on with a trowel.

As they unloaded the last few logs, I went inside to get some cash, but realised I didn’t have the right change. Neither did Yorgos, and while both of us were happy to sort it out another time, Kostas suggested that instead of change, they could bring me some more wood, another half-load. That sounded a great idea.

‘We’ll be back!’ they said. They weren’t sure when. I continued working in the garden and as the sun got warmer and I started on some messier jobs, I changed into a paint-covered shirt and similarly paint-covered pair of shorts. I was just thinking I’d call it a day and take Lisa for a walk when the guys returned.

We opened the gate again and Kostas backed in. We continued the unloading and the chat, and then as we were finishing up, Kostas looked at the palm tree and said, ‘You’re right, that needs to go.’

At this point I started thinking, ‘Well, it doesn’t really... It gives the house some privacy from the road. It needs to go one day, but not yet.’

But of course, it was too late. Kostas grabbed a long rope from his tuck and tied it around the trunk, and I was despatched to the road to check for cars coming around the corner as the truck was put in gear. It pulled the tree a little and then the wheels span. Again. And again. The tree was rocking and the concrete driveway lifting slightly and I worried for the gatepost.

‘Don’t scratch your head!’ mock-ordered Kostas, seeing me do exactly that. ‘You see all the work we do for you?!’

‘Be careful of the gate, I need it…’ I said but my words were lost.

‘Have you got another rope?’ asked Kostas. I fetched one that had been rescued from the beach, and that was attached.

‘Again!’ shouted Yorgos as the wheels span. Then since the tree roots were beginning to emerge from the ground, another strategy was mooted by Kostas.

‘Stand on top of it! All together!’

Soon two grown men were standing on the trunk of a leaning palm tree, now at 45 degrees but firmly hanging on as they rocked up and down, hanging onto the top of the gate. I didn’t join them. I was quite worried about my gate and gateposts, all essential for keeping Lisa safely in the garden apart from the fact that they’d cost me a fair bit.

When Kostas asked for some kind of garden tool, I thought that was an excellent idea, retreated to the apothiki and brought out various – an axe, an old pickaxe and some other thing with a serious blade, which they found very impressive. They set to whacking the roots with glee.

Then one of them thankfully realised we were wielding heavy-duty blades with gay abandon within centimetres of the main water supply to the house.

‘It’s OK, we’d better stop,’ I said, ‘let’s leave it for now.’

‘What, halfway?!!’ laughed Kostas with a determined look. Of course. It was as if they were drinking whisky. This thing now had to run its course.

I suggested it might be a good idea now to push the tree the opposite way, but that idea was instantly dismissed. More pulling with the rope, more standing on the palm tree, more bashing with implements…

‘It’s going! The tree’s going,’ said Kostas, grinning, ‘the gate’s going, the driveway, the house…’

At that point Dimitris, friend and neighbour, drove by on his way back from working at the doctor’s surgery and paused outside the gate. I was laughing but my nervousness must have showed when I explained what was happening, as no sooner had he disappeared than he was back to join the team. Despite his more controlled, serious demeanour, the situation had by then reached such a point of frenzy, a crazed level of violent activity that Lisa was barking and, probably afraid, she bit him on the bottom.

Dimitris stepped in and assessed the situation, then calmly said the tree needed to be pushed the opposite way now. Three, two, one… And it worked.

For better or worse, the tree was down. The gate and the post were still intact. Yorgos sat back, looking very red and dazed. Kostas was barely able to speak. With bits of palm tree strewn all around, it looked as if a hurricane had passed through. Which in a way it had.

Dimitris gradually walked back to his car. Then he called over, and I heard him say something about the car window. It was stuck.

‘Have you got a screwdriver?’ shouted Kostas.