Reviews

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

kaylamkruse's review against another edition

5.0

WTF…

yung_sch0lar's review against another edition

4.0

I'm finally finished! This one took a while for me to read because I would so frequently get annoyed with the main character(s) and would have to put the book down for several hours (days) before going back to it. But ultimately, I liked it. It's sad and beautiful and human.

amanda_em's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

bunsolved's review against another edition

4.0

RTC!!! I need to gather my thoughts properly first :D
4.4 (.5), rounded down. It wasn't quite 5 stars for me so I didn't want to give that.

elisabeth1st's review against another edition

3.0

Far too long. Far too repetitive. Reading the reviews with 4 & 5 stars readers enjoyed the melancholy of the book. I found that ongoing melancholy to be tedious. Perhaps if 20 chapters had been edited out of the book I would have found it more compelling. I was rewarded at the end of the book when it was noted that the community thought Kemal "not quite right in the head". My first Orhan Pamuk and I will be timid about others by him despite owning several.

nyr1226's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

irenealgi's review against another edition

4.0

I have spent 19 days reading this novel. At a rate of an average of 3 books a month for the year 2013, this will mean I am further away from my own record than I was back in May. It's been worth it.

I wish the novel had been 200 pages shorter though, but I don't know if I would have felt Kemal's obsession so much if it weren't for the extension of a novel and the chapters dedicated to Füsun's way of eating, watching movies or smoking. Maybe they were necessary, in all their dullness.


But what I really, really, really loved was the ending. Not the story's ending, the novel's. I liked the point were Pamuk shows up and is asked to finish the story himself (ironic, I know). And that last line almost made me cry (doesn't happen very often).

It's a beautiful novel, and one I might re-read at some point in my life.

sargardoon's review against another edition

2.0

Oh! It was long.

misslezlee's review against another edition

2.0

A friend of mine once commented that the English Patient was, " Alright if you enjoyed reading about rich people's infidelities." Well ditto, except this is about rich Turkish people's infidelities. The protagonist is a mentally ill jerk who ruins two women's lives and then compiles a museum to commemorate his "love". He has the time and money to run around Istanbul, later the world, feeding his obsession. Very voyeuristic - some parts made me feel a little bit queasy. Still, I struggled through the book, hoping that the next page would reveal something more than another episode, longingly retold in all its glorious detail, of what happened when he spent another evening watching TV with the woman he couldn't have. And then I'd read so much of this catalog that it seemed silly not to find out what really did happen. I'm not telling. You'll have to relive a rich, mentally ill, Turkish man's thirty year obsession to find out for yourself.

yuzureads's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75