I have heard only good things about the book and after a Friend told me there personally recommended, I bought it immediately. A trip to Turkey seemed to be the perfect time to get to know Shafak prose. But I have taken more than a week to read the novel was finished and repeatedly tried to put the book away. Only after the half I was able to inspire a little more to the story.
The action takes place in Istanbul, in Bombonpalast. This building was built on the ruins of two cemeteries on the orders of a wealthy Russians. The client hopes that he manages to end his life with his ex-wife to return and help her gain back the memory.
The palace is an imaginative building - each floor is different and has been decorated with a different type of balconies. He has one disadvantage - it stinks and is inhabited by vermin. The square in front of the house is used by neighbors as a garbage dump. The subject of dust and the stench seems to symbolize Istanbul: a hectic, full, cluttered city that is home to people of all nations.
Living like that, different people in the Sweet Palace. At the bottom are two brothers, twins or more precisely, her hair salon. One brother grew up in Turkey, the other in Australia. A university professor who has just separated from his wife moves into one of the houses will be - it helps him to his monstrous fat and ugly girlfriend, the incredibly rich, and with his ex-wife's friends. A student who grew up in Switzerland, lived together with his big dog, the smallest apartment. The color blue loving wife, her lover paid her apartment, lives opposite the university professor. One must not forget the following people - the nonstop her apartment cleaning and disinfecting woman from the very top, the Russian entomologist who vegetates as betrayed wife in front of the TV, the superstitious Meyr, the grandfather who tells his grandchildren of Dchinnen and other mythical beings and the mysterious old lady. An interesting mix of eccentric, strange characters, each be represented in a single chapter. Although the residents are very aptly described to me these chapters were eventually too long. Shafak, however abbreviated as the chapters and the individual fates are joined, it will be exciting and the novel gets more dynamic.
The novel design reminded me of "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk. Similar to the Nobel laureate has each chapter as a thumbnail.
Only the beginning is different - Shafak describes her narration, written by the underlines with graphic signs - this has not convinced me. If I do, for example, from the linear narrative read, I do not still see a horizontal line. Then it describes the events before the emergence of the candy palace - the way, how does it, I was not too convinced. I love to read novels that have something new and unexpected at the linguistic level, such a graphical "improvements" but I do not like. I think that inspired the novel can, Shafak told suggestive and sometimes funny, but I would recommend it only partially.
My Rating: 3 / 6
Elif Ş AFAK, Pchli pałac, translated by Anna Akbike Sulimowicz, 500 pages, Wydawnictwo Literackie
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