Eye-opening and deeply moving—essential for anyone looking for decency in the world today.
Turkey’s wildly disparate and clashing cultures, from isolated Muslim fundamentalism to jaded secularism, collide in this romantic yet clear-eyed translation from a noted Turkish composer and politician, now a member of that country’s Parliament.
Her village family ostracizes teenage Meryem after she is raped. When her older cousin Cemal returns from fighting in the Turkish army against the Kurds, his father, the family’s religious leader (and Meryem’s secret rapist), orders him to take Meryem to Istanbul and make her “disappear,” the typical fate of defiled village girls. Meryem innocently enjoys the journey to Istanbul, unaware of Cemal’s orders. To his mortification, Cemal cannot bring himself to kill Meryem. His army buddy Selahattin, a devout Muslim and genuinely good man, shows Cemal that the Koran can be interpreted as promoting love and peace, not vengeance. Meanwhile, Irfan, a professor with a TV show and a rich wife, escapes the meaningless of his life in Istanbul by sailing the Aegean Sea in an old boat. He hires Meryem and Cemal as his crew and introduces them to modern ways. Drawn to her budding intelligence, Irfan teaches Meryem to read. As Meryem blossoms, Cemal grows resentful, yet he, too, loses his desire to return to his father’s village. Tensions rise in an idyllic seaside village where they stay with a former ambassador who has withdrawn to his orange orchard to escape the ugliness he has witnessed in the world. Meryem falls in with a kind family who run a restaurant. Cemal and Irfan confront each other with truths neither wants to face. Irfan sails away after giving Meryem all his money. She goes to the restaurant full of hope, leaving Cemal to find his own way. Livaneli deftly folds his philosophical and political questioning into the psychology of his characters.
Eye-opening and deeply moving—essential for anyone looking for decency in the world today.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-36053-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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