Today I am pleased to present to you an excerpt from Barbara Bonfigli new fictional memoir, CAFE TEMPEST: Adventures on a Small Greek Island, as well as a short video of the very personable Barbara introducing her book and her beloved island.






Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island
by Barbara Bonfigli

About the book (from the publisher):

What is it about Greece that makes it so exotic, so romantic, so tantalizing that it's right at the top of everybody's bucket list - the one foreign land they're longing to visit? Our dreams are made on Never on Sunday, Zorba the Greek, and more recently My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Mama Mia.

Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island is a witty, evocative, beautifully written novel that puts you right in the heart of Greek island life. It's so alive with the sights and smells and tastes and characters of Greece that you can pick it up and start your Mediterranean vacation on page one. On a deeper level, the book is filled with the kinds of observations, reflections, and arc of self-discovery that make Eat, Pray, Love so compelling.

“Welcome to Pharos. Laugh and dance in the hammock--not the cradle--of Western civilization,” says author, lyricist, and theatrical producer Barbara Bonfigli. “I've been falling in love with Greece since I was old enough to drink retsina. But if Sarah hadn't captured my imagination you'd never know how I feel about friendship, feta, and the abundance of grace that turns friends into lovers and fishermen into kings.”

Excerpt from Chapter Three:

From Rhodes we catch a small caique to our destination. The island of Pharos is a cluster of arid volcanic rocks off the Turkish coast, with about two thousand inhabitants not counting cats and goats. I discovered it four years ago in the Classical manner (viz. The Odyssey above) when the boat I'd chartered with friends pitched up there by mistake. It was me on the dog watch, steering by a star, and it set. Just a slight navigational error; slight! We didn't end up in another language.

It doesn't matter that I'll never live it down; I've found my native land. The days are mild, the water warm, the sky an unfiltered blue. Pharians are by nature generous and embracing. Any visitor who makes the slightest attempt to speak their impossible language is practically adopted. Life here is intoxicating in its simplicity. No airport, it's too remote to attract many tour boats, and you'd have to be lost to just drop by. Though its face changes in August. Then the old men desert the tavernas--their backgammon boxes mold under the bar; farmers stop coming to town for an ouzaki; no goat herds trot through the village churning the streets to dust clouds; the fishermen stow their nets and turn their caiques into beach ferries. But this is May. Take a deep breath.

The boat docks just after midnight. Stavros, bent like the new moon, older than Charon, is there to meet us. In these narrow lanes his wooden pushcart is the only means of transporting our stuff, the donkeys having bedded down at sunset. He's happy to see us, his only customers tonight.

“Harika na se dho,” I tell him, a phrase learned over the winter. Until then what I'd thought meant “Happy to see you” was actually “I'm so thrilled to see you I could jump into bed with you right now.” Which may explain my popularity on Pharos.

Stavros hugs me and smiles at Alex. He's not too old to notice the waist-length chestnut hair, dark eyes under darker lashes, the sculpted angles and curves of a workout maven. He steps back, surveys our pile of bags, shakes his head--a Turkish rug dealer agreeing to a ridiculous price.

“It's no more than last year,” I tell him.

“But me, I'm a year older.” His crow-bright laughter echoes across the shuttered port.

A boy appears from the moonshadow of the street lamp and picks up a suitcase.

“Costas, my nephew.” He's twelve or thirteen, lean and wiry with dark hair and darker eyes, stooping to be invisible. I'm looking at Stavros, how many years before, waiting for his life to begin. Will he leave as Stavros never did, as eager to be gone from here as we are to arrive?

“Welcome,” he whispers, eyes down.

We set off under a black sky pricked with stars. The streets are narrow, lit by a half-moon falling on high whitewashed walls. As we climb out of the port to Kastro they taper to twisting passages no wider than Stavros's cart. We fall in behind, silent, listening to the dogs calling, the night birds, the tinny carillon of goat bells in the valley. I'm thrilled by the stillness, the sharp nightlines, the soft jasmine air. Below us the sea suddenly appears, a skein of rough silk.

“Look,” says Alex, her voice husky with amazement. Far below now, our ferry is rounding the tip of the harbor, its wake a fan of diminishing pleats scattering the moonlight.



To learn about Barbara Bonfigli and Café Tempest, feel free to visit any of these sites.

Order Café Tempest directly from the publisher - http://www.tellmepress.com/pub_ct.php or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Café-Tempest-Adventures-Small-Island/dp/0981645313

To see the complete tour schedule visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2009/05/cafe-tempest-by-barbara-bonfigli-summer.html

Barbara Bonfigli's website - http://www.cafetempest.com/

Thank you to Nikki Leigh and Promo 101 Virtual Blog Tours
for organizing this tour
and for providing me with my review copy of CAFE TEMPEST.

Blog Tour and Book Review #15: CAFE TEMPEST: Adventures on a Small Greek Island by Barbara Bonfigli

CAFE TEMPEST:

Adventures on a Small Greek Island

A Fictional Memoir

by Barbara Bonfigli

Synopsis:

When Sarah, a thirty-something American theatrical producer, is asked to direct the locals in their summer show, she picks Shakespeare's play The Tempest. What follows is a hilarious adventure in casting, rehearsing, and consuming. Her neighbors are excited about acting but delirious about eating. Their rehearsals in a deconsecrated church become a feast in four acts.

Armed with a sizzling wit, a dangerously limited Greek vocabulary, and a pitch-perfect ear for drama, Sarah navigates the major egos and minor storms of a cab driver Caliban, a postmaster Prospero, and a host of fishermen dukes and knaves.
When she falls in love, there are even trickier seas to navigate. Her own offstage romance provides an exhilarating, unpredictable counterpoint to Shakespeare's story of magic, intrigue, and the power of love.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

My Thoughts:
CAFE TEMPEST is an ambitious novel that covers a lot of territory. True, the setting is a small Greek island, but you will be exploring Sarah's heart, soul, sexuality, and spirituality.
As she sets to work on an article for Yoga Journal, Sarah examines various mantras, such as "The jewel is in the lotus" and "I am That," and how to invoke them for coping with daily life. When she agrees to direct the locals in a production of "The Tempest," she begins to see correlations between the mantras and Shakespeare. Needless to say, there are a lot of Shakespearean quotes tossed about, and a familiarity with "The Tempest" will enhance your enjoyment of this novel.
There is also a liberal sprinkling of Greek terminology and phrases which are translated as you read along. A small glossary at the back of the book helps for a quick reference.
Tossed into the pot of Eastern philosophy, Shakepearean and theater references, and Greek vocabulary is Sarah's bisexuality. All this is a lot for the reader to take on, and I sometimes felt more like an outsider looking in rather than having that sensation of stepping into the story. I think another reader with more of a background in theater and travel might not feel the same way.

CAFE TEMPEST often reads like a play -- the bulk of it is dialogue. I found this distacting at times as I tried to keep up with who said what. It made me realize how much I like descriptive prose. However, so much of the story is witty and flirtatious conversation, or scenes centering around misinterpretations due to inaccurate translations, that the abundance of dialogue is a necessary device.

Several recipes are included at the back of the book to tempt the culinarily inclined. For the truly adventuresome, the recipe for the Tempestini, the only retsina based cocktail, can be found on the author's website.

CAFE TEMPEST is illustrated throughout with beautifully evocotive line drawings and sketches by Gaia Franchetti - a special treat in themselves.

I would recommend CAFE TEMPEST to anyone who enjoys travel books, humor, Shakespeare and the theater, or is specifically interested in Greek culture and food.

About the author:

Barbara Bonfigli is an author, lyricist and theatrical producer. When she isn't writing songs or travel articles, or producing shows, she packs some French roast and catches a plane to Athens. Then a ferry or a hydrofoil to . . . but that's classified.

She hitchhiked to Greece in her first nomadic summer, and discovered her native land. She's been exploring it ever since -- hiking in the Pelion, kayaking in the Dodecanese, sailing the Aegean. In a tiny seaside taverna, over fried kalamari and a pitcher of homemade red, a few Greek families and she watched Obama conquer Berlin.
Maps are her recreational drug of choice. After wearing out five passports and four continents she uncorked her memories and imagination -- and a bottle or two of retsina -- to write her first novel, "Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island". It's a kind of "A Year in Provence" meets "Zorba the Greek". You are invited to the mythical island of Pharos, to laugh and dance in the hammock, not the cradle of Western civilization.

To learn about Barbara Bonfigli and CAFE TEMPEST, please visit any of these sites.

Order Café Tempest directly from the publisher - http://www.tellmepress.com/pub_ct.php

or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Café-Tempest-Adventures-Small-Island/dp/0981645313

To see the complete tour schedule visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2009/05/cafe-tempest-by-barbara-bonfigli-summer.html

Visit Barbara Bonfigli's website - www.cafetempest.com

Thank you to Nikki Leigh and Promo 101 Virtual Blog Tours

for organizing this tour

and for providing me with my review copy of CAFE TEMPEST.