The Figurine
By Victoria Hislop

The Figurine is a fascinating book of art, history, relationships and memories. Find out more in the blurb and review.

Blurb

In her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author* Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people – and countries – will pay to cling on to them.

Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors – and looters – alike.

When Helena inherits her grandparents’ apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime’s generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?

Helena’s desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth – and to understand the origins of her grandfather’s collection.

Helena’s attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather’s actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of ‘home’, both in relation to looted objects of antiquity … and herself.

*Victoria Hislop’s One August Night was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback in the first week of August 2021; Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback for four weeks in August and September 2020.

Review

Art in a book can be fascinating and coupled together with Greece makes it an interesting read.

The statue on the front cover is a Cycladic statuette from the Bronze Age, it has an air of mystique and value about it and has much significance within the book.

Helena inherits her grandparent’s apartment in Greece. Victoria Hislop, then captures imagination and ensures readers can picture the scene of Helena’s present times and the past. It appears a heavily researched book and yet, fascinatingly, given a light touch to ensure it reads like a novel, an encapsulating story. There’s a lot to say, at a little over 500 pages, so the interweaving of fact and fiction in the style it is written in, is welcome and makes The Figurine rather interesting as well as very readable and pleasantly more compelling than expected.

There’s great flow as the 1940’s, 1960’s – where the book opens, 1968 to be precise; 1970’s, 1980’s swirl by. Hislop has excellent sense of time and place, so any reader can see what was happening in reality in these given time periods from pop culture to shops, even Woolworths gets a mention, to war and so much more. It has enough to evoke memories within readers as it has with Helena when she lands in Greece. She has childhood memories of ice-creams and of her, rather distant, strict grandfather who was very much a man of his time and also of a certain history of Greece, that she was quite unaware of, being so young. As we see Helena as she grows up, like her, readers can discover more about her grandfather, whom, it seems, had a lot to do with the movement of artwork and not necessarily legally, and later, her grandmother, then taking it up to the time of when she inherits their abode. It all opens up great scope for readers to be shown and informed of the movement and looting of art and a lot of history of the country and what turbulent times and periods of deep uncertainty its inhabitants lived through.

It’s a fascinating read and very worth sticking with, there’s a lot to be gained from The Figurine, including some entertainment as well as knowledge in what is, overall quite an encapsulating book, that goes by quicker than you may expect.