The Bastard of Istanbul

I bought this novel based on the high praise and good reviews. I also bought it because I like Elif Shafak’s TED talks and the way she comes across in interviews. But the writing is awful, unless you like clichés and “aunties” with “puckish twinkles in their eyes.” It’s juvenile writing for very young adults. Worse, the precious writing coupled with over-the-top humor that gets eye rolls rather than laughs is only half the problem. The characters are flat and never come across as real people. They are basically mouthpieces for Shafak or her contradictory points of view. Despite the seriousness of the topic, it’s a hard book to take seriously. Nor is the story itself very compelling. There are huge gaps—in one scene Zeliha announces to her family she is pregnant (a bombshell for a Muslim woman without a husband or even a boyfriend), and the next the child is already an adult!—and a lot of jumping around so that the novel is jarringly disjointed. Overall, it’s a terrible book that seems to have gotten good reviews for taking on the Armenian Genocide, a topic strictly forbidden in Turkey. As I said, I like Shafak’s politics, but her fiction is disastrously bad.

Disclaimer: I loved Shafak's Forty Rules of Love and hoped Bastard of Istanbul would be another fun jaunt into magical-realism. I loved the female insights into Turkish, Armenian-American family life- it was more intense than fun.I read it over a quiet Easter weekend and the first hundred pages were a struggle. While I loved a novel that challenged stereotypes of women in the Middle East and provided some insights about the Armenian genocide, sometimes it felt like Shafak was trying too hard to make her political points known.The other issue I had is both nineteen year old protagonists didn't sound like teenagers in their dialogue. In some cases they sounded like late 20 something graduate students discussing a thesis.I was confused by some of the characters and the hundred year old family histories. By the end it was clear why family trees were not included.I visited Turkey a few years ago and having a general understanding of the nation's history and current political situation was helpful.I think Shafak tries to tie things together near the end, but like many family and national issues- they sometimes are messy.She is a great writer and if you are up for a challenging read into sometimes intense subjects: female empowerment, genocide and rape and you have an interest in the Middle East- this is a book worth checking out.

The book opens with 19-year-old Zeliha pregnant and seeking an abortion, which she ends up not getting. I instantly disliked her because she seemed hardened and brash. And the reader gets no context for her unpleasant personality until way too late. It's really hard for me to like her after the fact when she came across as so unlikeable for so long. Soon we meet, Asya, her daughter as an adult, who comes across as equally unlikeable. Men in this Turkish family die young, the reader learns. All the women in the family are living together and one of the siblings, Mustafa, has moved to Arizona and married an American woman. Eventually, the American woman's daughter, Armanoush, whose father is Armenian, travels secretly to Istanbul to meet her step-father's family to reconcile her conflicted views over the 1915 Turkish genocide of the Armenians. She's kind of in the middle of this conflict because her father (her mother divorced him) is Armenian and her step-father is Turkish.This book is interesting, in that it explores this conflict between two cultural groups - the Turks and the Armenians. There is much discussion of this in an Istanbul cafe and an online forum Amanoush participates in. I have to admit I find it astounding that people can continue to hate people hundreds of years later of an event long over, that current-time people were not a party to. I know this is true because people are still fighting the civil war in the US. This doesn't make much sense to me. This to me shows why there is so much conflict in the world. If there can be no reconciliation and understanding, then future conflict and violence is likely inevitable.I was super disappointed that the author gave no descriptive grounding on Istanbul. I've read hundreds of books set in different countries around the world and this author only inundates you with too many people and too much food. There is a recipe in the middle of the book, which completely threw me out of the story. There are no descriptions of the architecture, the natural surroundings, the street vendors, the unique sounds and smells of Istanbul. I never felt like I was there. If a cafe scene with too much drinking and smoking grounds you in a sense of place, this is your book.Spoiler alert. At the end of the story, you find out why all the men in the family don't live long lives. This book does not make me at all eager to meet people from either of these cultures. And I consider it insulting that women's independence in this book is represented by heavy drinking, smoking, and murder. I find it very disappointing and a slap in the face to our gender.