Books: The Seas of Love

THE MERMAID MADONNA (310 pp.)—Stratis Myrivilis—Crowell($5).

The scene is a sun-drenched Aegean island. The central character is a blonde, green-eyed girl, found as a baby by a drink-fuddled Greek fisherman and grown into a woman who has the local boys dreaming. By most fictional standards, this should be the cutoff point, the end of any sensible man's interest in a novel called The Mermaid Madonna. No one should make that mistake. Author Stratis Myrivilis is probably the finest of living Greek writers. The Mermaid Madonna is the first of his books to come to the U.S., and even with its liberal dash...