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Jump to navigationJump to searchMany and Many a Year Ago by Selcuk Altun (view source)
Revision as of 12:04, 7 October 2020
, 12:04, 7 October 2020no edit summary
Instead the hero is shuttled round Istanbul like the taxi customer he so regularly is - jaggedly crossing from one part of that huge city to the next. The sun's out, but it's as hazy as it gets. I sought a lot more depth and darkness to his travails, and with the help of his first person narrative voice I could have taken or left, and a sense of every other character being a stool pigeon for the author to bury him deeper in the odd for odd's sake, this did not work for me. So by the time the second half merged into a most singular love story - and never has one been so contrived for a book's hero - I was long past hoping for a more approachable protagonist, and a stronger empathy for him and the people requesting so much of him.
It's a unique premise, borrowing as I suggest from classics of the form, then trying to go all romantic on us, but certainly not emulating them. Stick to Zafon, if you enjoy his books, check out [[Pretty Dead Things by Barbara Nadel]] or one of the other Istanbul-set thrillers, but do not go to the ends of the earth for this, however convincing the person saying this is missing from their/your life might be. You might like [[The Beautiful Torment of a Dream by A Portsmouth]] but we had our reservations.
I must thank Telegram for my review copy.
