The Oracle of Stamboul

The prose effortlessly conjures the saffron-scented mansions and light dappled alleyways of Istanbul in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, but what will make you devour this book whole is the charming and irrestible young protagonist...

This comes from one of the advertising blurbs, prominently featured on the cover of The Oracle of Stamboul. And the very first pages seemed to agree: A seemingly dense and rich atmosphere was created around the birth of our protagonist, Eleonora, and her hometown, Constanta. But all is not well, as the first signs of cliche are quick to arrive: Eleonoras flock, a swarm of birds that never leaves her and that will have no plot relevance whatsoever over the next 250 pages.

The rest of the book is mostly defined by Eleonoras great passivity. Driven by her father, her aunt, or Moncef Bey and electing not to speak for a great part of the book (instead writing down everything on pieces of paper), she almost never has any influence on any of the diverse (but often quite irrelevant) happenings around her. She is characterized as incredibly intelligent, solving about any task her teachers give her, but it never seems to transfer into the life outside of these clearly defined settings. And of course her intelligence largely only affects the learning of languages and the reading of books, even comparing cryptography with language learning and remarking that she is not good with money. Mathematics should not be too important for an intelligent girl after all.

In the end Lukas writing is inconsistent and full of holes, constantly introducing characters of very little importance, building them up but never letting them have any influence on the plot at large. Eleonora intelligence never causes any interesting decisions to influence the plot either, leaving the story dead in the water.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

I wavered for some time between starting these memoirs with their beginning or with their end, meaning: Should I start with my birth or my death?

These are the first lines of chapter I of The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. As an Acute and truthful observer Bras Cubas describes his life in 19th century Brazil. It is the rather uneventful life of a rich bachelor trying but never quite managing to find his place in the life around him. Commenting and analyzing this strangely passive life from the comfortable position of being dead the narrator excels in accurately and openly describing his own states of mind and his observations about the people around him.

We learn about his love for Virgilia, a long affair with a complicated past, his studies in Portugal where he is rescued by a farmer (beautifully describing his thought processes when deciding how much money to give the farmer in order to prove himself thankful), a freed slave whose first action was to buy a slave himself and a mad philosopher whose philosophy he immediately recognizes as the only true one.

Originally published in 1880 the Memoirs are written in an almost drunken, meandering way. The length of the chapters and their style greatly varies, with some chapters composed entirely of dots, chapters addressing the reader directly or notes about a chapter the narrator planned to make but did not quite get to. It is a style fitting to the passive, seldom self controlled life of Bras Cubas and, in the end, very entertaining to read.

The Museum of Innocence

Time for a further attempt to revive this blog and overcome my past laziness in updating it. And while there is a lot to tell about the time between my last entry and now I will skip all that for now and start with a book review.

The Museum of Innocence

Set in the Turkey of the seventies (but written in 2009), The Museum of Innocence, describes a few years in the life of Kemal, wealthy heir of his fathers factory and member of the rich and "westernized" social circles of Istanbul. Westernized is an ill-defined term here, because even though this small group of friends tries to appear more open and free than the traditional Turkish society of these days, they are still bound by many of the same morals. It is still a great exception that Sibel and Kemal slept together, even though their relationship has lasted for years. Indeed, Kemal once recalls an instance of a relationship that broke apart because of this: After sleeping multiple times together before marriage the man decided that his girlfriend was obviously immoral and left her.

But Sibel and Kemal are happy together, and their engagement party is scheduled to be soon and it has to be in western style in a big hotel with illegally imported whisky. A true party for the elite of Istanbul. But then Füsun appears, a shopgirl and old childhood acquaintance of Kemal. And slowly but surly his life breaks down. They begin to hopelessly fall in love, a love going so far that he starts collecting little items out of her possession. Each cigarette stub she leaves in the empty apartment where they meet, maps of their other meeting places, every little item he can somehow attach a meaning to.

Within this rapidly changing Turkish society the struggle between the imported Western values and the old Turkish morals is always present. In the end their lives unravel, hopes are destroyed, friends alienated and lost, dreams broken. Kemal is left wandering through the world visiting museums and meeting collectors. The Museum of Innocence, exhibiting the items he collected from Füsun is founded in her old house, reminding every visitor of their struggle and also of Kemals admission that, after all, he lived a happy life.

Written by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, the book takes us on a expedition into Kemals mind, explaining his motivations and his impressions of the people around him, bringing the microcosmos of the upperclass society of Istanbul to life.