Polis Loizou’s brooding, claustrophobic story of superstition and unexpected queer desire’s set at Christmas in rural Cyprus, during the mid-1920’s. Despo’s anxiously awaiting the birth of her first child but her dreams keeps drawing her back to her own childhood and her father’s disturbing tales of the legendary Kalikantzaroi, mythical, malevolent goblins lurking in dark, out-of-the-way places, who only venture out into the world of humans during the twelve days of Christmas. Meanwhile her husband Loukas is struggling with his overwhelming longing for newly-arrived, Englishman William. Loizou’s novella had some fascinating, promising aspects particularly the depiction of Cypriot culture and folklore, but I found the narrative itself harder to engage with, the characterisation was a little too thin and the plot a little too forced for my taste.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Fairlight Moderns

This is a charming book about a couple in Cyprus in the 1920s and takes place during the 12 days of Christmas. Despo and Loukas have been married for a short time and are going to have their first child. Despo hopes desperately that their child won't be born until after epiphany as it is inauspicious. Loukas seems to wish that the child is never born at all. Their trials and tribulations are set beside local tales of devil creatures known as kalikantzari.

While I enjoyed the setting and folklore a lot, the ending was a bit of a letdown.

Fantastic book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read a digital arc in exchange for my feedback.

I'm on the fence with this one. It's sparse, and its characters are earthy & solid but not entirely emotionally real: on the one hand, it works really well as a piece of modern fairy-tale telling for those reasons; on the other, also for those reasons, it didn't entirely work as either horror or history or becoming-narrative for me.

There were elements that felt particular and tonally interesting, especially the food and all the rituals accompanying it, of exchange and generosity and gratitude, and the practice of blessing the hands of the person who cooked for you. I'm very curious about superstition generally, and I think the rhythms of ritual and tradition and faith and magic were a really good backbone for this novella, gave it shape and structure. But the central emotional tensions of the novel seemed only half there, & even though what did exist was interesting, my experience of the characters' fears and desires was too muted to feel as much as I wanted when they reached their climax.

Set in rural Cyprus shortly after WW1, the story is about a newly married couple, Despo and Loukas. They have both lost their parents and it seems have little in common apart from this, and the fact that no one else would have them. It takes place during the 12 days of Christmas, when according to local folklore, demons known as Kalikantzari are abroad. Despo, who is in the last stages of pregnancy is desperately afraid she'll give birth during that time leaving her child vulnerable to these creatures. Meanwhile, Louise has his own demons to face; he has feelings for an English man who is staying in the village.

While I can see that this is well written, I found I wasn't particularly drawn to the characters and cared little about them; this could be down to the novella form, or it could be to do with the translation. I found the setting interesting, but on the whole it didn't quite live up to my expectation.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion*

This was such a joy to read, I have never read anything by the author. It is a quite charming book, happening in rural Cyprus in 20's. It beautifully tells stories of scocities were traditions are just more than a simple tradition.

I really enjoyed A Good Year by Polis Loizou. I went into the book with absolutely no expectations, and discovered an interesting piece of writing that charmed the heck out of me. Set over the course of the twelve days of Christmas in a small town in Cyprus in 1925, this story of a woman and her husband facing fear, desire, and mystery managed to be enchanting, claustrophobic, and powerful.

The superstitions and folklore of the townfolk inform the story and create a feeling of heightened reality. Despo and Loukas, husband and wife and parents to an unborn child, both deal with isolation and secret fears as the days pass and Despo comes closer to giving birth.

I really loved this book.

A Good Year was a quick but intense and interesting read that blended emotional drama with gothic folktale. It's one of those stories where it will be up to the individual reader to decide if the folklore aspects are 'real' or an elaborate metaphor. I personally viewed it as the latter, and interpreted the book as such. Essentially, this is a story of secrets threatening to bubble over in a small, rural community still steeped in the old ways as the modern world tries to seep in. Despite the short length of the piece, both Despo and Loukas came across as well-drawn characters with emotional depth, and the narration held my interest from start to finish. Well worth a read if you are looking for a darker drama with a folkloric twist that you can read in a single sitting.

It was a good story laced with what I assume is Cypriot folklore, but I wished I didn’t have to google every single local meal or creature, when mentioned in the story. There is a gothic feel to the novella that I found sometimes present and sometimes not at all (in my own perception), and I thought the plot was a bit confusing at times. It was well written though and the descriptions were great, it’s very difficult not being able to imagine the time and setting of the story. I might need to re-read this one to be able to fully appreciate it.

The twelve days of Christmas provide the setting for A Good Year, a forthcoming novella in the Fairlight Moderns series written by UK-based Cypriot author Polis Loizou. Loizou’s work is set in his native Cyprus in 1925, then under British occupation and soon to become a Crown colony. Despo, recently married and heavily pregnant, hopes that her baby will arrive after Epiphany. The feast will bring to an end the dark period after Christmas. Whoever is born in the shadowy time of year between Christmas and Epiphany can fall prey to the kalikantzari, malevolent hairy goblins with donkey’s feet. Despo prays that she will have a healthy baby and that she will manage to keep him safe from the fearsome creatures which wander around during the black winter nights.

In the meantime, Despo’s husband Loukas is facing fears of a different nature, as much to his surprise, guilt and shame, he finds himself irresistibly attracted to an Englishman who has just settled in the village.

Fairlight Books has introduced us to some great authors and I feel that with Loizou and his novella they have discovered another winner. A Good Year is written in a simple, yet poetic prose, one rich with the hues, flavours and traditions of a rural Mediterranean village. Although set in 1925, many of the descriptions evoke a timeless, ancient landscape. Just by way of comparison, the atmosphere of this novella is not unlike Narine Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell from the Sky. It inhabits the same magical realist world, at once rooted in a historical reality and coloured by myth, legends and traditions.

If I have a quibble about A Good Year, it is that, much as I like the novella as a form, I think that there is a lot going on in this particular work, and it might have needed the breathing space which only a longer format can allow. At the heart of A Good Year is a poignant tale about an outsider, a man who is discovering himself and his sexuality, and the psychological battle which he goes through as he accepts this aspect of his personality. But Despo’s perspective is equally interesting, and one about which ultimately we do not get much closure. This novella also has strong Gothic overtones, its folk horror element never discounted as purely metaphorical. The historical context also provides the occasion for the author to obliquely comment on the colonial experience. I found this aspect particularly interesting as a Maltese reader, even though it was not developed in any great detail.

A Good Year left me wanting more, but in a positive way. It is a novella I certainly recommend, while looking forward to Loizou’s future work.

A Good Year is a novel about folklore, desires, and tradition, as a Cypriot couple pass the twelve days of Christmas. In 1920s rural Cyprus, Despo is pregnant and afraid of local legends that suggest a dangerous time for her and her baby, but her new husband Loukas is little help, as he seems distracted. Loukas' mind is on something much more tangible: his desires for the Englishman who lives in their village, and if these are the sign of the devil.

This is a folk gothic horror story that combines tradition with lingering moments of modernity after the First World War, and considers the impact of traditional lore and fears upon people and their minds. For a long time I didn't realise when it was meant to be set, which made me a bit confused, but generally I enjoyed the setting and the way the atmosphere was built up, especially around folktales and the church as separate and yet intertwined. I thought the twelve days of Christmas structure also worked very well, building up tension and giving the story a very specific sense of time, both only a few days but also looking back over the year.

I enjoyed how A Good Year combines a tale of desire and not finding a framework for yourself within traditional values alongside a creepily lingering folk gothic story of pregnancy and evil creatures. At times I lost track of some of the side characters (and I should've checked the blurb as to when it was set) so it's worth taking your time with this one to enjoy the atmosphere.

I’m the first to review this book properly for GR, not all that surprisingly, because this certainly is something of an acquired taste.
Ok, so…I recently downloaded a bunch of these short novels by Fairlight books with the goal of stepping up my international reading. This one takes the readers not only to a different place, but to a different time.
Cyrpus, post WWI, is a place divided. Multinational, though not quite a melting pot, it exists profoundly steeped in superstition and old traditions. It’s 1925, but it comes across as medieval in its dedicated backwardness. Among this, one young family, a man and his heavily pregnant wife, are trying to survive a fairly ominous Christmas season.
The book is structured as 12 chapters for 12 days of Christmas, though it isn’t exactly a heartwarming seasonal read. Quite the opposite, in fact. The man in the story is wrestling with his secret homosexual side as he is, time and again, tempted by the redhaired married Englishman living on the island; the woman has to with pregnancy fears and both of them are terrified of the local evil creatures that are either real or vividly imagined.
The book does a good job of creating a time and place and utilizing that as characters, but overall, it didn’t quite work for me – the motional engagement just wasn’t there. Interesting, competently written and relentlessly bleak, this is probably the sort of thing one has to be in the mood for. Thanks Netgalley.