I’ve always liked Susan Johnson’s writing, ever since I found a piece by her in the Griffith Review Journal (Number 32), in which she painted a picture of motherhood that I empathised with. I used it as an example of voice in fiction in a post on this website. Her latest publication is just as enlightening in regard to mother/daughter relationships.
Since then I’ve read some of Susan’s longer works and have enjoyed them, especially this, her latest novel, Aphrodite’s Breath, set in Kythera. This is not a review of the book, rather an illustration of why I found it so compelling. Let me note, first of all, that we are coming from different perspectives and writerly backgrounds. Susan has made a living from writing, whereas I have come to it late in life after language teaching, and have so far managed to self publish one novel, Karrana, an ebook about writing, and to nearly finish a creative fictional memoir about healing from childhood trauma; the latter has the working title, Voices from the Deep.
My interest in Kythera goes back to the fact that I come from Grafton on the Clarence River, situated in the far north of the New South Wales on the coastal plain. I learnt, while researching Greek immigrants to my hometown, that many of them came from Kythera, this closest of the islands to the Greek mainland. There’s a post on this site about Greek cafes and a book that I read for my research back then.
I was recently delighted to read Susan Johnson’s book, Aphrodite’s Breath, in which she tells the story of returning to Kythera, her beloved Greek Island, when she is in her sixties. This time, she is accompanied by her eighty-five-year-old mother, Barbara Johnson. The differences and difficulties the two women face when living close together on the island in a cold winter, form the major themes and conflict of the narrative. Susan’s book is rich in content and metaphor. She describes in the book all the people, the old and new friendships, as well as her close family members, all of whom are so important to her dynamic and sociable personality. As well as this, several eccentric people who lived and died on Kythera fit well into her thematic content. She also includes mystical titbits that fall her way on her walks around the island and the ubiquitous churches and cats that populate the place.
What I found very useful in the beginning were the facts about Kythera itself: how it is reached from Athens, its history and its position facing the Peloponnese. Even in these descriptions, Susan’s romantic perspective shows through.
Susan writes: “Although it’s physically close to the Peloponnese, treacherous winter seas and cyclonic winds often cut the island off from both ferries and planes. Cape Meleas is perilous for ships: it was the last place Odysseus saw before monster winds flung him into the lands of myth….But for most of the year the sea surrounding Kythera is calm, its colour changing from the deepest navy-blue to a brilliant aquamarine. Ferries arriving after the seven-hour trip from Athens enter the port at Diakofti beneath great limestone cliffs, where a road snakes up and up and up behind the harbor. If you’re staring straight into the water over the ship’s railing, you see schools of sparkling fish dart around in the fantastically bright water and, beyond, a beach with white sand and iridescent turquoise shallows. And everywhere the light, the Greek light.”
Other reasons for my desire to know more about Kythera is my lifelong passion for Greek thought and philosophy, from Plato and Socrates onwards to Aristotle, the author of the book Poetics, which remains a bible for any writer who, like me, struggles to know about structure in poetry and fictional works in general. Mythology and Odysseus and their kin also find their way into the rich seams of gold in Johnson’s book.
When I was at Teachers College in Armidale in the early sixties, I studied philosophy with a gifted teacher who taught me about Greek philosophy and such mysteries as the oracle in Delphe; I fell in love with Greece from afar and travelled to the Peloponnese with friends from France in 1968. See my post on this site https://www.anneskyvington.com.au/delphi-and-its-sacred-ways/
I recognise this passion that Greece instills in many people when I read Susan Johnson’s book, Aphrodite’s Breath. The author is enthralled by Kythera, just as other writers, such as Charles Baudelaire, have been. .Just as I have been. It’s a place of romance and passion and Susan doesn’t conceal the conflicts and dangers inherent in exposing oneself to such emotions: her passion for Kythera echoes, for me, other literary themes of love linked to madness and death, such as in Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The contrast between Susan’s passion and the lukewarm attitude of her elderly mother, highlights this theme, especially since Barbara dies from a major illness not long after her stay in Kythera.
For a more detailed review of Susan’s book, see this one from the SMH: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/i-was-wrecked-this-brave-and-beautiful-travel-memoir-almost-didn-t-exist-20230329-p5cwdg.html
and The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/03/aphrodites-breath-by-susan-johnson-review-a-revealing-memoir-about-mothers-and-daughters
