MixedThe GuardianThis is a cluttered carpetbag of a novel, crammed with characters and themes, not unlike Istanbul itself. But what might be invigorating in a city can, in a novel, be a bit bewildering ... In the first five chapters, rather like Robert Altman in Short Cuts, Shafak presents a series of disconnected scenes and characters that may, possibly, we hope, eventually cohere ...the two central figures, 19-year-old cousins Asya and Armanoush, one Turkish, one Armenian-American, finally meet in Istanbul and start talking about memory, identity, the wilful ignorance of the Turks of the massacres of Armenians in 1915, and whether the past can be shaken off...The trouble is that these poor girls are often overwhelmed by the book's political intent ... The magical realist descriptions of Istanbul and Asya's home are powerful: these are places where djinns comfortably coexist with the Turkish version of The Apprentice ...there's no doubt that the book is clever, thick with ideas and themes and politics ...unquestionably an ambitious book, exuberant and teeming. But, perhaps because of the sometimes florid writing, reading it feels like holding a sack from which 20 very angry cats are fighting to escape.
