The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak ( translated from Turkish by Muge Gocek)

A Turkish Delight 

   Istanbul has been on my travel itinerary for a very long time. I dream of visiting the Blue mosque, shopping at the Grand Bazaar, sunset cruise on the Bosphorus... Oh the joy! So until then I shall explore the Turkey in the fictional world. 

   The Flea Palace is about BonBon Palace, a decrepit building in Istanbul, whose residents are troubled by the piling garbage near their wall and the bugs infesting the homes. Through the voice of the narrator, Elif Shafak explores the various facets of the building's occupants. Ten flats and ten different stories, it was like peeking through a window and watching scenes unfold in each apartment.

  Here is a sneak peek into some of these flats.

Flat No.1: Musa, his wife Meryem and son Muhammet. Meryem is concerned about her son getting bullied at school and hopes that he would find the courage to defend himself.

Flat No.3: The hairdressers Cemal and Celal,  As for them ,there is never a dull moment in their shop.

Flat No.5: Hadj Hadj who spends his time telling stories to his grandchildren and having his daughter-in-law worried about how these stories would influence these children.

Flat No.7: The narrator, "Me", a recently divorced university professor.

Flat No.9: Hygiene Tyijen and her daughter Su .  Hygiene Tyijen  is a cleanliness freak who is obsessed with getting rid of every bug,  miniscule or large.

Flat No.10: Madame Auntie, a matriarch with a mysterious past. 

   

   At a certain point while reading the book, these varied tales didn't seem to have any consonance. But eventually, like scraps of fabric that are stitched together to form a beautiful quilt, these tales fell into place perfectly.

  I had started reading this book anticipating Whirling Dervishes and Belly Dancers but there is a lot more to Turkey that will enchant us and this book is a microcosm of that.

  On a final note, I salute all translators whose work transcend the boundaries of language and have made such gems written in native languages available to those foreign. Thank you Muge Gocek for the English translation of this book.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman

A box full of sepia tinted photographs

  

    If you are a romantic like me, then coming upon a box of old photographs in a rusty trunk or a tattered suitcase, would be like finding a ticket to ride the "time travel machine". You are instantly transported into a sepia tinted world as you use your vivid imagination and weave tales trying to piece together the lives of those who stare back at you, from those photos. This is how I felt while reading this book.

    Set in New York's Coney Island in the early part of the twentieth century, The Museum of Extraordinary Things is a fairy tale of sorts. There is estranged love, strange magical creatures ( well magical in their own way), a monster of a villain and a grand finale with lots of fireworks. 

   Coralie Sardie is one of the attractions at her father's show, the Museum which exhibits the quirks of nature, the "freak show".  Eddie Cohan in a Russian immigrant, a magician of his own kind... a photographer who like a magician freezes the scene unfolding through the eye of the camera, for all eternity to gasp in awe. Chance brings Coralie and Eddie together but love does not always conquer all...

    I have heard that Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeeper is the best of her work, I hope to read it some day and figure that out myself ( and I shall post my review here in my blog ). Coming back to the book, I like how the author has strung real life events into the story line, giving the novel a sense of credulity. And the narrative is very surreal, reading this book was like a leaf wafting in a gentle breeze.

  If you are a fan of historical fiction, then  you may have already read this book or put it on your reading list. To all others, I recommend this book.

Passages from the Book :

“Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith. Whatever was witnessed in the real world was unknowable in real time. It was the eye of the camera that captured the world as it truly was.”

“When darkness fell, he told me to close my eyes and dream, for in my dreams I would find another world, and in my waking life I would soon enough find such a world as well...” 

 “I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn’t bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn’t be lost.” 

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

I wonder what would happen if a dead body was found in the woodland behind Pemberley ?

Book Description :

In their six years of marriage, Elizabeth and Darcy have forged a peaceful, happy life for their family at Pemberley, Darcy’s impressive estate. Her father is a regular visitor; her sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; the marriage prospects for Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, are favorable. And preparations for their annual autumn ball are proceeding apace. But on the eve of the ball, chaos descends. Lydia Wickham, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister who, with her husband, has been barred from the estate, arrives in a hysterical state—shrieking that Wickham has been murdered.  Plunged into frightening mystery and a lurid murder trial, the lives of Pemberley’s owners and servants alike may not   be the same.



My views on the book:

  I am not quite sure if I want to call this book a murder mystery. Yes there is a mysterious murder in the plot but everything else that makes a book a thriller or a mystery novel is wanting.

  The author P.D. James ( Phyllis Dorothy James), literally drops a dead body in the Pemberley estate and the events that follow, make up the rest of the story. An attempt is made to keep the tone of the narrative as similar as possible to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but Austen's subtle wit is lacking, naturally as that would be hard to emulate.

  The book is a spin-off of Pride and Prejudice. The plot is a sequel to Jane Austen's masterpiece, so in this book Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are married.  I was looking for a Agatha Christie style detective in Elizabeth Darcy but the character seemed very subdued . The plot just goes with the flow. A body is discovered, a suspect is apprehended, an inquest follows shortly after and a trial is held before all  of it is wrapped up with a neat confession, so incredibly predictable.

  I had really hoped to read an entertaining piece of good fiction but this book has been disappointing. The idea is great, a murder in Pemberly, but in my opinion there is nothing exciting in the book.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

And sometimes, against all odds, 

against all logic, we still hope.

  This is the only other book based on the Holocaust that I have read, my first being The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. This book too is a child's perspective of the Holocaust, the exception here being that the child is outside the fence. 

  The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tackles one of the most gruesome tales in human history, through the eyes of Bruno, a nine year old German boy, who is trying to make sense of the  depravity in Auschwitz under the command of his father. He befriends Shmuel, a nine year Jewish inmate of Auschwitz. How this friendship between a German boy and a Jewish boy succours is what you have to read and find out.

  The Holocaust and the history of the German Nazis is most likely known to all of us. John Boyne in his book, does not thereby dwell on these horrendous acts , he has simply left it to the readers' imagination. This is probably the reason why the movie is more appealing than the book.  I have read some reviews criticizing Boyne for portraying Bruno as being naive, ignorant of the harsh reality. Different strokes for different folks... In my opinion Bruno chooses to be in denial especially because his Papa is the malefactor. 

    The book works best to introduce the Holocaust to young minds through a powerful fable written sensitively. I will recommend this book to mature readers too, because the Holocaust is history but we still harbour prejudices and choose to act on it. Sometimes a children's tale is all we need to help us stay human.

Quotes from the book that I like :

“...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.” 

“What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” 

“. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.” 

The Pearl That Broke It's Shell by Nadia Hashimi

                Every war is not fought on the battlefield.

 

  This is a book about two young women and their travails to live a life with dignity. Two stories, set in Afghanistan in different time periods and yet so similar, it almost feels like time has stood still in Afghanistan while rest of the world has moved on.

  Rahima, the middle child in a family of five daughters is dressed up as a boy by her mother, for the want of a male child to support the family. Dressed as a "bacha posh", Rahima feels liberated, to (be able to) play on the streets, go to school or work to make some extra money. In a society that believes that a woman's role is in the house as wife, a mother and a dutiful housekeeper, Rahima's fate isn't any different. She and her sisters are married off to men twice their age as third or fourth wives. What follows is akin to swimming against the tide.

  Shekiba too has a similar tale. She loses her mother and siblings to an epidemic that stikes her village and soon after her father too dies heart broken. Shekiba is forced to seek refuge with her grandmother and other relatives. Her struggles to reclaim her home only lands her in deeper trouble. She is then "given away" to work at the palace in Kabul as a guard.

  There is a lot of pain and despair in this book, both these women are bogged down by draconian laws that rule the land. While reading this, I ought to have felt appalled but strangely am not, despite the westernization of our lifestyles, women of many nations and undoubtedly in mine too suffer a similar fate. These stories may not be " currently trending"on social media but it is changing. Among this angst there is  always hope. Maybe Shekiba will give up but Rahima certainly has a chance.

  A well written book that takes the reader deep into the heartland of a war torn nation. A poignant tale about the women fighting a battle against the odds.

Murderous Intent by Lee Hobart

  The Ramblings of a Retired Female Private Detective....


   Every time I pick up a book to read,  I hope it would be a good choice. It probably is only in a perfect world that such an event happens every time.  I occasionally do end up reading such not so great work.  If I was asked why I would bother to write a review on such a book, having wasted time reading it, then I would say "this isn't a perfect world and whatever the outcome I can't stop talking about what I've read". This is one such occasion.

  Jim Curtis holds the memory stick which has a secret formula to strengthen the cladding of airplane wings. When he is accidentally killed, the memory sticks are untraceable.  Laura Curtis, Jim's wife, and her two children now find themselves trapped in a web of an international conspiracy. Laura moves her family to Tredunnon, hoping to start afresh but  unless she finds those memory sticks, her family will always be in danger.

  Who is Franz Reimann? And why was he keen on buying Jim's company? Can Danny Myers , Jim's partner be trusted? Lots of questions and Laura has no one to take help from and the police wouldn't even investigate the mysterious  circumstances of Jim's death. Maybe the handyman, Andy Simpson knows more than just fixing taps.

  I found this book on Netgalley, the intriguing title and a fairly decent book cover convinced me to download it.  Nothing else about the book  is impressive.  A desperation to make it a page turner is apparent all through the book. As the narrative style  is mostly from Laura Curtis's point of view, not much detail is provided on Jim's work and I would have liked to read more about it. Being retired, the private detective Laura, plays a rather subdued role. The only skill she displays of ever having been a detective, are a few karate moves.  The characters were superficial, the plot weak and the writing amateurish , a book I wish I had not read.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

           Gang aft agley, "

( The best laid plans of mice and men

     often go awry )

                                                                           -To a Mouse by Robert Burns

     I am a big fan of British satire, so when I picked this book up I hoped to be impressed. The narrative style is quite unlike anything I have read before and I loved it. At the same time, reading this book was tedious too. This is really hard to explain, do I like the book or not? I can't tell and that is annoying. I was experiencing a farrago of emotions while reading it.

     The book is written in four parts, each part focuses on one of the primary characters, sort of a point of view of that particular character. The first two parts on Archie and Samad are like a prelude. Samad is a first generation Bangladeshi immigrant and Archie is Samad's man Friday. I found this part to be placid and it took an effort to keep reading. The second half of the book shifts to Irie Jones and from here on I sensed a glimmer of interest to keep reading.   

     Lot of cliches and over dramatized characterization completely overshadows the quirky and well written narrative. In retrospect, I am intrigued to read Zadie Smith's writings in the future, this book however has failed to impress.