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ARIADNE & DIONYSUS
In her much-anticipated debut novel in English, Greek author and world-class conductor Stamatia Karampini brilliantly unravels a mythological archetype against the backdrop of the modern classical music industry.
A six-year-old girl from Crete is frightened when she spots her own name inside a book of mythology: ARIADNE. Despite being reassured it is just fiction, during the next thirty years, Ariadne's life continuously reflects the myth—like the moon mirrored in a rain puddle on the asphalt.
Her Ulyssean journey from Crete to Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and the UK is marked by an immigrant's infinite loneliness, the ebb and flow of memory, waves of passion, desire, regret, shame and yearning for an unrealized dream. All the while overt sexism obscures reality and gradually fragments her identity.
Until one day in Stockholm, she crosses paths with a familiar soul: a fallen, self-exiled "Olympian god" in need of help.
A six-year-old girl from Crete is frightened when she spots her own name inside a book of mythology: ARIADNE. Despite being reassured it is just fiction, during the next thirty years, Ariadne's life continuously reflects the myth—like the moon mirrored in a rain puddle on the asphalt.
Her Ulyssean journey from Crete to Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and the UK is marked by an immigrant's infinite loneliness, the ebb and flow of memory, waves of passion, desire, regret, shame and yearning for an unrealized dream. All the while overt sexism obscures reality and gradually fragments her identity.
Until one day in Stockholm, she crosses paths with a familiar soul: a fallen, self-exiled "Olympian god" in need of help.
398 pages, Paperback
Published May 28, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 28, 2021
One of my favourite books of 2021! For me, this book is a true Odyssey experienced both by the main characters and the readers. I just picked this book up on a whim, vaguely interested in the Greek mythology reference mentioned in the title. However, this book doesn’t just borrow from Greek mythology - it transposes it into the modern world with its luminous narrative and incisive commentary on women and marginalisation in the orchestra industry and the world in general. If you feel alienated, you can find a kindred spirit in the character of Ariadne.
When I first picked up this book, I wasn't sure what to expect, because, despite being a fan of literary fiction, I knew almost nothing about classical music or the orchestra industry. However, Stamatia Karampini’s expert and passionate descriptions of art and music elevated this novel into something beautiful that can be enjoyed by anyone, from laymans to virtuosos. This, paired with the fully-fleshed and intriguing cast of characters, makes for a novel you can’t put down.
When I first picked up this book, I wasn't sure what to expect, because, despite being a fan of literary fiction, I knew almost nothing about classical music or the orchestra industry. However, Stamatia Karampini’s expert and passionate descriptions of art and music elevated this novel into something beautiful that can be enjoyed by anyone, from laymans to virtuosos. This, paired with the fully-fleshed and intriguing cast of characters, makes for a novel you can’t put down.
May 24, 2021
Ariadne & Dionysus was a much needed escape for me. I love books that take me to places I’ve always wanted to travel to. I’ve always loved stories inspired by myths and fairy tales. I hope this isn’t a spoiler, but this great story doesn’t just hint to Greek myths. I recognized elements from numerous classic fairy tales in it. Given the obvious importance Stamatia Karampini places upon details in her writing, I’m sure it’s no coincidence. What Margaret Atwood did with the Little Red Riding Hood for A Handmaid’s Tale, Karampini does by alluding to Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, the Emperor without clothes on, Cinderella, Jack and the Bean stock and probably more fairy-tale-related Easter eggs.
I loved “visiting” Stockholm, Crete and London. I liked how the book is full of colorful characters from all over the world( US, UK, Sweden, Greece, Armenia, Russia, France, Germany, Japan and Italy). All of them communicate in English, but you can tell the author made an effort to have them sound original. I can tell, for example, when two Brits were talking with each other and which class they belong to, or if they come from money or have an artist background. I appreciate details like the
I loved “visiting” Stockholm, Crete and London. I liked how the book is full of colorful characters from all over the world( US, UK, Sweden, Greece, Armenia, Russia, France, Germany, Japan and Italy). All of them communicate in English, but you can tell the author made an effort to have them sound original. I can tell, for example, when two Brits were talking with each other and which class they belong to, or if they come from money or have an artist background. I appreciate details like the
May 28, 2021
After finishing the book, I went back and re-read it, appreciating the details more the second time around.
A coming of age story for adults. Three years prior, Ariadne Pappathanos, was a pianist, a cellist, a conductor and a wife. She’s none of those things anymore. Now, even the sound of music triggers in her panic attacks. At the peak of the Greek crisis and the 37-year-old lives a quiet, solitary life, working at a mundane office job that pays her enough to support her estranged family living in Greece. When she gets fired from her office-job in Stockholm, the Greek immigrant is struggling to survive in wintry Sweden. Yanked out of her “fortress of solitude”, Ariadne is thrown into life’s Labyrinth, where Minotaurs waylay at every corner, including some “old specters” from her past.
A coming of age story for adults. Three years prior, Ariadne Pappathanos, was a pianist, a cellist, a conductor and a wife. She’s none of those things anymore. Now, even the sound of music triggers in her panic attacks. At the peak of the Greek crisis and the 37-year-old lives a quiet, solitary life, working at a mundane office job that pays her enough to support her estranged family living in Greece. When she gets fired from her office-job in Stockholm, the Greek immigrant is struggling to survive in wintry Sweden. Yanked out of her “fortress of solitude”, Ariadne is thrown into life’s Labyrinth, where Minotaurs waylay at every corner, including some “old specters” from her past.
June 8, 2021
Stamatia Karampini writes beautifully and from deep experience: a professional conductor who dares to tell some of the less pleasant truths about the music business through the eyes of a young talented conductor and an older musician who no longer wants to play the game. Both are idealists who have been beaten down by the business' focus on shallow success rather than the high, nearly unattainable peaks of immortal art to which both strive to reach as artists and as human beings. It brings them, dangerously at first, together in a love story of shared values. Ms Karampini's novel presents them as a modern day Ariadne and Dionysus and these archetypes hover on the surface and in the depths as we read reminding us of the eternal struggle between those seeking truth and those happy to just get by.
Even if you have no interest in the underside of the concert world, this is a superb story, well and poetically told. Dare I say that Ms Karampini's writing has the lilt and flow of music?
Even if you have no interest in the underside of the concert world, this is a superb story, well and poetically told. Dare I say that Ms Karampini's writing has the lilt and flow of music?
May 23, 2021
I will begin by saying I know nothing about the music world except what I saw in the movie Rocketman. And I know even less about conducting an orchestra. I really never gave it much thought until I read this book. Imagine my surprise when I found myself truly enjoying it! There is so much passion to this story. It is obvious that the author knows the industry well. I don’t know that I’ve ever rooted for a character in a book as I did for Ariadne. I am anxious to know the rest of the story.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book . Bravo Ms.Karampini!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book . Bravo Ms.Karampini!
May 18, 2021
“A vocation-“amputee” can still sense the presence of the missing dream.”
I was sent a free copy of ARIADNE & DIONYSUS. What an unexpected pleasure this read was! I've never "listened" using only my "reading eyes" before. I need to come back and edit/ add to this review once I've digested this beauty. For now, I'm smiling and crying at the same time.
I was sent a free copy of ARIADNE & DIONYSUS. What an unexpected pleasure this read was! I've never "listened" using only my "reading eyes" before. I need to come back and edit/ add to this review once I've digested this beauty. For now, I'm smiling and crying at the same time.
Read
May 20, 2021Outstanding. A novel worth to read. Deep emotions to relate with and a story that travels you to beautiful places.Read it twice. U ll be surprised the things u ll discover the second time. 😉
May 22, 2021
Quite literally a page turner ! This book had me by the collar from beginning to end. I have not read anything like this in a very long time. Highly recommend.
June 9, 2021
Ariadne & Dionysus
Greek conductor Stamatia Karampini writes compelling debut novel
June 2018 I heard the Greek conductor Stamatia Karampini conduct for the first time in Dublin. She toured England and Ireland, where she conducted exciting performances of Strauss's Overture Die Fledermaus and Bruch's Violin Concerto. Karampini turned out to be a very convincing, expressive and charismatic conductor. We will be hearing a lot more from this spirited lady, I decided during that concert…
But the pandemic threw a spanner in the works a year and a half later. Multi-talented Karampini decided to use time completing her novel Ariadne & Dionysus, which she had already started. This led to a compelling fictional novel, in which the female protagonist is a talented conductor in her late thirties, who must perform fascinating antics to find her role in musical life. She becomes the assistant of a world-famous conductor with the character of a werewolf and stands for a long time without being seen. But she herself perceives musical life and all the musicians she meets with the keen eye of a bird of prey, who sees right through characters and analyzes them psychologically down to the smallest and sometimes most horrific details.
It is tempting to fill in certain characters from her book for whom they could model. These are big names, but I won't reveal them here. In passing, Karampini provides a merciless and disconcerting picture of the often dubious dynamics of international musical life, in which egos and commerce set the tone and in which everything revolves around the 'survival of the fittest'. But there are exceptions and even the alcoholic werewolf deep down turns out to be a musician with integrity and a good person, so it will come as no surprise to anyone that he and the fictional conductor end up dating…
All in all, Karampini has written a compelling book, intelligently and with flair depicting form and content in colourful, idiosyncratic and imaginative language. There will be a second part and that's a good thing, because after the last page of Ariadne & Dionysus you are only too eager to know how the story will continue. Karampini the writer is not or hardly inferior to Karampini the conductor, although it is to be hoped that she too will make herself heard on the concert stages with her baton as a magic wand.
Wenneke Savenije
Chief editor musicmagazine De Nieuwe Muze
Exclusive Interview with Stamatia Karampini about her novel at
www.denieuwemuze.nl
Greek conductor Stamatia Karampini writes compelling debut novel
June 2018 I heard the Greek conductor Stamatia Karampini conduct for the first time in Dublin. She toured England and Ireland, where she conducted exciting performances of Strauss's Overture Die Fledermaus and Bruch's Violin Concerto. Karampini turned out to be a very convincing, expressive and charismatic conductor. We will be hearing a lot more from this spirited lady, I decided during that concert…
But the pandemic threw a spanner in the works a year and a half later. Multi-talented Karampini decided to use time completing her novel Ariadne & Dionysus, which she had already started. This led to a compelling fictional novel, in which the female protagonist is a talented conductor in her late thirties, who must perform fascinating antics to find her role in musical life. She becomes the assistant of a world-famous conductor with the character of a werewolf and stands for a long time without being seen. But she herself perceives musical life and all the musicians she meets with the keen eye of a bird of prey, who sees right through characters and analyzes them psychologically down to the smallest and sometimes most horrific details.
It is tempting to fill in certain characters from her book for whom they could model. These are big names, but I won't reveal them here. In passing, Karampini provides a merciless and disconcerting picture of the often dubious dynamics of international musical life, in which egos and commerce set the tone and in which everything revolves around the 'survival of the fittest'. But there are exceptions and even the alcoholic werewolf deep down turns out to be a musician with integrity and a good person, so it will come as no surprise to anyone that he and the fictional conductor end up dating…
All in all, Karampini has written a compelling book, intelligently and with flair depicting form and content in colourful, idiosyncratic and imaginative language. There will be a second part and that's a good thing, because after the last page of Ariadne & Dionysus you are only too eager to know how the story will continue. Karampini the writer is not or hardly inferior to Karampini the conductor, although it is to be hoped that she too will make herself heard on the concert stages with her baton as a magic wand.
Wenneke Savenije
Chief editor musicmagazine De Nieuwe Muze
Exclusive Interview with Stamatia Karampini about her novel at
www.denieuwemuze.nl
May 19, 2021
I had the opportunity to get an early copy of this and, foolishly, I kept postponing reading it—no idea why. Possibly, because I never thought of myself as a classical music enthusiast, and I knew that the story( loosely based on the homonymous Greek myth) is set against the background of the music industry. This book caught me by surprise. It wasn’t at all what I expected. I also liked that for once, the protagonist is not a beauty in her 20s.
The writing and narrative style is unique and evolving (clearly on purpose) as the characters grow. The protagonists--odd as they might be--are complex, interesting and relatable. I found myself “missing” them after I was done reading. I was fascinated with all the insider-info and the music references, but also with the main metaphor: orchestras as a microcosm of our society.
ARIADNE & DIONYSUS is without a doubt one of the best novels I’ve read in the last five years. It’s not for “speed-readers.” It kicks off as a psychological jigsaw-puzzle. The first chapter, PRELUDES (possibly a prologue of sorts), is a collection of nine vignettes, each presenting a piece of the puzzle. Every detail matters. The final picture reveals the unexpected. And it entails so much more than just the portrait of an artist.
The writing and narrative style is unique and evolving (clearly on purpose) as the characters grow. The protagonists--odd as they might be--are complex, interesting and relatable. I found myself “missing” them after I was done reading. I was fascinated with all the insider-info and the music references, but also with the main metaphor: orchestras as a microcosm of our society.
ARIADNE & DIONYSUS is without a doubt one of the best novels I’ve read in the last five years. It’s not for “speed-readers.” It kicks off as a psychological jigsaw-puzzle. The first chapter, PRELUDES (possibly a prologue of sorts), is a collection of nine vignettes, each presenting a piece of the puzzle. Every detail matters. The final picture reveals the unexpected. And it entails so much more than just the portrait of an artist.
May 18, 2021
“Her skin was covered in nature’s brightly-printed fabric, the forest’s pulse synchronized with hers. It entered her every pore. This wasn’t a walk in the woods; it was a transfusion. She only left when the fog started to roll out. Exiting the forest, she witnessed an impetuous wind swirling up a mound of vibrant, amber foliage. She bristled in relief at the thought of her own threadbare existence drifting into nature’s autumnal whirl of polychrome oblivion.”
February 19, 2022
The book offers a very vivid description of the life of a Greek immigrant who is a very talented musician. It's playfully written and accurately goes through much of the life of a European young adult exploring the continent. I definitely recommend it for your collection.
December 26, 2021
I'm actually not very sure about this book. The plot around sexism and ageism in the conducting world is obviously told from the writer's personal experience, and the passages about music and conducting are quite fascinating. Some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional. The book is written in English which is not the author's native language and that is very obvious - there are quite a few "wrong" words in places and also some words which no native speaker would ever use, or which even don't exist. It ends very oddly - in the middle of the story, with a second volume to follow. I will however be interested to see what happens in the follow-up.
November 21, 2021
Ms. Karampini gives us a wondrous take on the age old story of Princess Ariadne of Crete. I stumbled upon the book during my search for mythology retellings and this author certainly doesn't disappoint!
January 1, 2022
Looking forward to the sequel
June 3, 2021
I had the opportunity to get an early copy of this and, foolishly, I kept postponing reading it—no idea why. Possibly, because I never thought of myself as a classical music enthusiast, and I knew that the story( loosely based on the homonymous Greek myth) is set against the background of the music industry. This book caught me by surprise. It wasn’t at all what I expected. I also liked that for once, the protagonist is not a beauty in her 20s.
The writing and narrative style is unique and evolving (clearly on purpose) as the characters grow. The protagonists--odd as they might be--are complex, interesting and relatable. I found myself “missing” them after I was done reading. I was fascinated with all the insider-info and the music references, but also with the main metaphor: orchestras as a microcosm of our society.
ARIADNE & DIONYSUS is without a doubt one of the best novels I’ve read in the last five years. It’s not for “speed-readers.” It kicks off as a psychological jigsaw-puzzle. The first chapter, PRELUDES (possibly a prologue of sorts), is a collection of nine vignettes, each presenting a piece of the puzzle. Every detail matters. The final picture reveals the unexpected. And it entails so much more than just the portrait of an artist.
The writing and narrative style is unique and evolving (clearly on purpose) as the characters grow. The protagonists--odd as they might be--are complex, interesting and relatable. I found myself “missing” them after I was done reading. I was fascinated with all the insider-info and the music references, but also with the main metaphor: orchestras as a microcosm of our society.
ARIADNE & DIONYSUS is without a doubt one of the best novels I’ve read in the last five years. It’s not for “speed-readers.” It kicks off as a psychological jigsaw-puzzle. The first chapter, PRELUDES (possibly a prologue of sorts), is a collection of nine vignettes, each presenting a piece of the puzzle. Every detail matters. The final picture reveals the unexpected. And it entails so much more than just the portrait of an artist.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews