not too sure how to rate this as i disliked the protagonist so much. At the beginning his coldness and insistence on rationality irritated me, but as I read on and particularly as the scheme unveiled itself and his illusions shattered I understood why he had to be unlikable. The reveal and his subsequent realisation wasn't even something to be celebrated however; all I could do was sit back as his previously solid understandings of himself and his relation to the world and others crumbled slowly. There is an underlying metaphor regarding the pretensions and delusions of the Old World English upper class. Nicholas frequently explains his behaviours as being due to his nationality, and the cold repression of England is contrasted with the deep emotions the Greek landscape. I think this is a portrait of the classic pre-war standards slowly realising their unsustainabilty in the face of modernity and progression, and the inner psychological and psychosexual turmoil this ignited in the psyche of the upper class western man.