MixedBookforumTaubman’s book, for all its strengths, fails to deliver on the promise of its subtitle. For while it does an admirable job of illuminating the man, it fails to cast adequate light on crucial aspects of his times. He pays too little attention to economics and social developments: key factors in understanding why Gorbachev’s support waned and his project failed … The bulk of Taubman’s book is given over to chronicling the policy discussions, party meetings, summits, fetes, and coups de théâtre of Gorbachev’s subsequent years in power. These he describes in great, often granular, detail … Taubman’s book, for all its strengths, fails to deliver on the promise of its subtitle. For while it does an admirable job of illuminating the man, it fails to cast adequate light on crucial aspects of his times. He pays too little attention to economics and social developments: key factors in understanding why Gorbachev’s support waned and his project failed.
Orhan Pamuk, Trans. by Ekin Oklap
MixedBookforumIn Pamuk’s latest book, The Red-Haired Woman, his avatar is a bookish Istanbulite, Cem, who struggles with 'the enigma of fathers and sons' ... Pamuk’s plotting is so overdetermined — and so relentlessly in service to his unsubtle thematic arguments — that the novel’s denouement is tiresomely predictable ... Pamuk’s postmodern puzzles are as meticulous as ever, and The Red-Haired Woman contains a wealth of atmospheric detail and memorable scenes. But he recycles situations and set pieces from his earlier books to a maddening degree ... his writing would be better served if he unshackled it from the grand task he set himself some seven books ago.
