3.5★s
“When I phoned the local Greek bank, a hesitant English speaker asked me to speak more slowly please. It was exactly what I asked when anyone spoke to me in Greek: I needed each word to stand alone, shipwrecked in a little pool of air, adrift from the rest of the fleet.”

Aphrodite’s Breath is a memoir by Australian author, Susan Johnson. In 2019, Susan Johnson decides to up sticks, take her elderly mother and go to Greece, to live on the island of Kythera. There are several precipitating factors: she’s not long divorced; her father and maternal grandmother have both recently died, which brings her mother, Barbara to Brisbane; and her sons go to live with their father in London. When she quits her job at The Courier Mail, what’s to keep her here?

Kythera, in the Ionian Islands of Greece, is a place she has lived in her youth, it holds appeal. But the preparations and the red tape, the hoops to be jumped through before they even get there, are numerous.

Eventually, they arrive at their new address: Almond Tree House, Aroniadika, Kythera, Greece 80200. It’s not quite the house they were promised, not the idyll they’d been expecting, and eighty-five-year-old Barbara is very dissatisfied. The weather is cold, the house is draughty, there are power failures, the internet connection is sporadic, and the car they were promised has been delayed. They’re paying too much for it all.

Having none of the language, barely two words of Greek to rub together, can be isolating. But with broken Greek and charades, they sort of manage. Susan goes on many walks, explores abandoned houses on the island and, in addition to her daily Greek language lessons, researches the life of a woman who lived on Kythera, Rose Kasimati, the mother of Lefcadio Hearn.

On leaving Barbara alone one night “How brave she was, how proud and resolute, yet how vulnerable! She was infuriating, too, but – unlike me – she was never anything less than her authentic, spitfire self.”

As summer comes on, they have overseas visitors, friends and family, and play musical beds to accommodate everyone. In May, they move to a house that seems to be much better, in Manitochori. The improved weather, accommodation and their landlady all have a positive effect on moods: Barbara is much happier. There are lots of summer dances. Somehow, Susan temporarily acquires a French/Greek beau.

Together, Susan and Barbara endure storms, earthquakes, ticks and more, and Susan, fascinated by everything Greek and Kytherian, comes to realise that, in so many things, what they relish is remarkably dissimilar: “It sometimes seemed to me that the ways in which Mum and I experienced the world were entirely different.”

At the end of summer, visitors depart, and Susan enthusiastically takes part in the olive harvest while Barbara stays in the house. Months together in close quarters are not all smooth sailing: Susan is quite candid about her feelings and doesn’t hesitate to include scenarios that don’t paint her in the best light. It is agreed that Barbara will go home early, with her son after his visit, a visit that demonstrates to them both that “Every child has a different mother and father, even siblings who share the same parents.”

Even after more than a year on Kythera, Susan’s Greek is still very basic: “…so many freestanding words seemed useless to me, so many pearls clattering to the floor, unstrung, a broken necklace. “’ ‘Dog bite hand’ might get me understood, but whose hand, which dog, and what came next? Surely it was the string that mattered, holding all the pearls together.”

While it drags a bit once Barbara departs the scene, Johnson does give the reader some wonderful prose: “France represents a more sober cultivation of existence, from gardens to language to food. France’s beauty is soft, manicured and formal; Greece is loud-mouthed, untrammelled, too big to be tamed. Greece is still home to tragedy and joy, to gods and humans seeking ecstasy, its beauty merciless, its feet unshod.” Barbara Johnson’s epilogue is a lovely touch to close this interesting memoir.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Allen & Unwin.