Francoism Framed By Romance

Victoria Hislop's The Island proved to be the summer read of choice for a wide cross-section of Brits on holiday over the past two years, and many will have awaited The Return, her follow-up, with bated breath.

Well, fear not, Hislop fans, there was more where that came from. This time the setting is lovely Moorish Granada, where we find two thirty-something holiday-makers, Sonia and Maggie, on a mini-break to learn flamenco.

Sonia's mother, who died when she was young, was Spanish herself, and as Sonia makes her way around various dance-classes and cafés, trying to take her mind off her stultifying marriage to her alcoholic banker husband back home, she is overcome by a powerful desire for Spanish music and dancing. And before long, a family secret begins to raise its not entirely surprising head.

By chance, she meets an old man in a café called Miguel. He starts to tell her about the Civil War. There is a faded black-and-white photograph on the café wall of a young woman in flamenco dress, to whom Sonia feels a strange connection.

She asks Miguel about her, and a story unfolds that will send shock waves through her sense of Spanish - and family - history. Can you guess what it is yet? When, a few chapters in, Sonia learns that her mother was originally from Granada and was in fact a keen flamenco dancer whose passage to England in the late 1930s was shrouded in mystery, one has a pretty good idea of what the grand revelation will be.

But the story of the Spanish Civil War is always shocking and Miguel's re-telling of it is executed with verve and sensitivity. Hislop's honourable mission is to remind readers of the atrocities of the 1930s and the equally dishonourable 'pact of forgetting' that came after them. This makes for gripping fiction, even in her decidedly plain English.

But framing this terrible historical truth within a modern story as sensational as Sonia's leaves a slightly sickly taste in the mouth. Are the horrors of Francoism not enough to move readers these days? Do we really need such a whopping spoonful of romance to help the medicine go down?

Well, perhaps we do. The almost inevitable colossal sales figures for this book will prove it. And summer is, after all, a very forgiving time when it comes to books like these.

There continue to be some great novels about the Spanish Civil War - Bernardo Artxaga's The Accordionist's Son is a recent example - and although The Return is not one of them, it is an excellent beach read, simple enough to be enjoyed even when half-cut, sun-struck and falling asleep after lunch.