My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
The first book your loving moderator read with the Book Club was “My Name is Red” by Orhan Pamuk.
This was the general idea:
“In Istanbul, in the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day – in the European manner. But when one of the miniaturists goes missing and is feared murdered, their master seeks outside help.”
But I have to say the book really didn’t work for me. I pushed my way through it because it was my first book with the club and because, like films, I hate to bail out before the end just in case something amazing happens that makes all the effort worthwhile. In this case there was no such amazement.
Sure some of the ideas were intriguing and the setting in a time when traditional eatern art forms were starting to feel the growing influence of European “realism” provided what might have been interesting tensions, but it still didn’t work for me.
I didn’t feel sufficient engagement with any of the many characters through whom we see the events of the book unfold.
I am willing to venture that it may have read more convincingly in its original Turkish. Perhaps. But in what is essentially a thriller, I never found that I cared enough to ever really give a monkey’s who-dunnit.
For those who may wish to follow this book further, there is an interview with Orhan Pamuk on the RandomHouse website.
