This is the third book I read by the bestselling Turkish writer Elif Shafak; the previous two, (The Flea Palace and even more The Forty Rules of Love)This is the third book I read by the bestselling Turkish writer Elif Shafak; the previous two, (The Flea Palace and even more The Forty Rules of Love) disappointed me. After the opening chapter of this book, 'The Bastard of Istanbul', I thought I had finally caught a good piece of writing: the way Shafak sets down the 19 year old, quirky Zeliha is very strong and the sketch of her Turkish family environment just hilarious. But after that the book jumps a few times forward in time, and above all there starts an endless stream of characters and meandering stories, making you dizzy. The ironic tone almost always prevails, but suddenly a heavy discussion on the Armenian genocide-issue emerges, we get a lesson on the danger of tattoes and are offered a few recipes of Turkish and Armenian dishes. Then a magic, evil Djinn appears on stage to explain some dramatic twists, and sometimes you think you've landed in a kind of Bollywood soap scene. It is that change in tone that bothers me a lot.
Mind you, Shafak is very strong in the action scenes and even the discussion on how differently Armenians and Turks deal with their past (the first cultivating it, others denying or ignoring it) is quite interesting (on this focus, see my review in my Sense-of-History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). But the different tones of the scenes often curse with each other. The end of the story (which I can not reveal here without spoiling the story) is problematic, because only now it appears that behind the strong opening scene lies a very traumatic experience, that just appears out of the blue, without building up to it. I rate this book slightly higher than the previous ones by Shafak, but I'm sure I'm not going become a lover of her work....more
Loading...
