A deligtful desciption of a visit to the island that cradles the Aegean Sea. There is so much to be said about the island that Unsworth wisely lays out only a sampler, framed in a motor trip from the west to the east ofthe island. There is an adequate map, and some black and white photos, and a concise and evocative text. ( )

Crete by Barry Unsworth is a long travel essay that is part of the National Geographic Society Directions series that I really like. I like them so well that I want to read all the titles that are available in this series ... eventually. This series is travel books written by well known authors who either live or have done extensive research in various places around the world. Unsworth has written several novels set in the ancient and modern Hellenistic world and spoke Greek well enough to get around in the area so he was a logical choice to write about Crete.

This book is a long essay at 170 pages and, but unlike other titles in the series, it did not inspire me to want to travel to Crete. In fact, it did the opposite. Unsworth wrote extensively in it about the overcrowded and over-built tourist spots and the poor state of the rest of the country, and even though it is a popular tourist destination for many, this book was enough to dissuade me from visiting there. There are probably other places on the planet more worthy of my time and money. Unsworth did love all of the walking and hiking opportunities that the island presented and wrote about the role that the various conquerors of the island had in its history, but overall it did not seem to me to be an inspiring kind of place to visit, or an inspiring piece of writing either.

Unsworth uses a unique sentence structure in this book. He writes, in what I call Yoda speak. He puts what most people would consider the ending clause of the sentence at the beginning. This results in a unique style but it also interrupts the flow of the prose. At first it was jarring and I thought that it was the result of poor editing, but since it was a pattern that repeated throughout the book it became apparent that it was not an editing problem. I would have to read more by this author in order to determine if this is an anomaly or just his normal style of writing. I don't think it did anything to entrance the reader who wants to learn about Crete and in fact might make them put this book down and not read anything else by this author or about Crete.

An average entry in this series at best. ( )

A beautiful travelers' eye view of Crete's history and modern day personality. ( )