Novel set mainly in the hippie Matala Caves of Crete, 1967

5th March 2018

The Secret Life of Alfred Nightingale by Rebecca Stonehill, novel set mainly in the hippie Matala Caves of Crete, 1967.

In the 1960s a community of backpacking hippies settled in Matala, a remote corner of Crete in the Mediterranean, where tourists were largely unknown. Tourists even came to goggle at the hippie tourists! They lived in man-made Neolithic caves and slept on Roman tombs. The most famous visitor to Matala was singer Joni Mitchell, who immortalised the ideal hippie scene in her 1971 song “Carey”. (Read more about the hippie setting on the MessyNessyChic blog). The author’s mother spent some time living in the caves. 

Photo courtesy: MessNessyChic

The hippies were eventually driven out by the Church and the Military Junta.

The Secret Life of Alfred Nightingale is largely set at Matala and on Crete, although the story starts in Twickenham. Two young men, Jimmy and Charles frequent Eel Pie Island where there is a vibrant youth culture and a freedom that perhaps is unavailable elsewhere in late 1960s Britain. They hear tell of the wonderful life that is open to anyone who wants to join the community in Matala and the lure of hanging out and smoking weed is just too strong to resist. This is, of course, the tail end of the Swinging ’60s and 1967 is The Summer of Love.

Jimmy is driven to escape his home life in large part because he has such a difficult relationship with his undermining Father. He persuades his friend Charles to leave and hitch hike down to Crete. Most of the book deals with their experiences in the hippie community, and Jimmy’s longing for Chenoa, a young woman whom he meets and for whom he instantly falls within hours of arriving. He is there for merely a week or so and we follow his trials and tribulations and irascible nature as he engages with life on the island. He meets German twins who probe what his father did during WW2 and somehow their discussion prompts him to consider his father’s life afresh. Compounded by his ultimate lack of success with Chenoa (not for want of trying, however), he decides to return home

Parts 2 and 3 of the book neatly bring an overview and further understanding to the central story. And it is at this point that the relevance of the title becomes clear.

The writer has a real talent for story-telling and can evoke the feel of the island of Crete at different periods of the 20th Century. She also portrays Jimmy as an angry young man and explores the psychological phenomenon of projection, when one generation unconsciously ‘carries’ the emotional trauma and resultant anger from a previous generation.

I did however, struggle a little with the structure of the book. Jimmy has only ever been as far as Calais with his parents and now he is embarking with Charles on a hitch hiking trip through Europe to Crete. Within a couple of pages the two are already boarding a ferry in Piraeus, heading for Crete. For me there was so much that could have been explored, this being their first real travel adventure; it felt that the author rushed to pop her characters into community life in Matala, with a similar hurried feeling on the return journey. For me this felt dislocating.

There is a lot of taking off/putting on of ‘boxer shorts’, which didn’t actually come into vogue until the mid-80s. It should have been the dreaded “Y”-fronts, probably made of nylon. And remember, this is 1967, the boys are frequently described as lathering themselves in suntan lotion, when suntan lotion wasn’t actually a ubiquitous commodity; nor something in all likelihood that boys of their age would have thought to bring amidst their chaotic packing. (It was more likely to be the use of olive oil and a bit of “baking” in the sun, enhanced by silver foil trays that would direct even more rays to certain parts of the body!).

No matter, overall an interesting read, in part a coming-of-age novel that conjures up the feel of the 1960s and introduces readers to the hippie community of Crete all those years ago.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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