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aeolias's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
beccaej's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
finitha's review against another edition
5.0
Excepting 'Snow' , this is my favourite novel of Pamuk. The style is unique as expected of Pamuk, giving us the views of each character (even that of the murderer which contains the clues of guessing him) and without knowing we are transported to the splendour and religious intrigue of sixteenth century Istanbul.
Throughout the book the narration is in first person with chapter headings like 'I am a Corpse', 'I am Called Black', 'I am a Dog' etc. The beginning chapters could be a bit confusing, but once you get the hang of it, nothing will stop you from reading this splendid work. An author is in a sense a preserver, and Pamuk does pickle up Istanbul's treasured past and memories.
Throughout the book the narration is in first person with chapter headings like 'I am a Corpse', 'I am Called Black', 'I am a Dog' etc. The beginning chapters could be a bit confusing, but once you get the hang of it, nothing will stop you from reading this splendid work. An author is in a sense a preserver, and Pamuk does pickle up Istanbul's treasured past and memories.
slksmstrs's review against another edition
2.0
Beautifully written but riddled with meaningless exposition and repetition. The male characters were so dull, you didn't know who was speaking when if you forgot to read the name at the beginning of the chapters. Had to drag myself through the last half of the book.
surabhidiwan's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 Stars for me!
I picked up the book with enthusiasm because I had read so many amazing things about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it as much as I heard people praise it.
The book is a historical novel which appreciates art enormously! The story is about miniaturist artists who are constantly making some art for either their Sultan, or to bring out their own emotions through their paintings. Every detail of painting in the book is explained in such a manner that I was sure that I have seen the painting.
The story is about finding a murderer who killed 2 famous artists. The murderer mistakenly left a painting in the hands of the first person he murdered, which becomes a clue to basically find him in the end.
The book is so much into art and gives in-depth details, so much so that I lost interest. It became really tough as well as boring in between. The book is only good in bits and pieces.
I expected wayyyyy too much from this book, though. It was such a disappointment!
I picked up the book with enthusiasm because I had read so many amazing things about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it as much as I heard people praise it.
The book is a historical novel which appreciates art enormously! The story is about miniaturist artists who are constantly making some art for either their Sultan, or to bring out their own emotions through their paintings. Every detail of painting in the book is explained in such a manner that I was sure that I have seen the painting.
The story is about finding a murderer who killed 2 famous artists. The murderer mistakenly left a painting in the hands of the first person he murdered, which becomes a clue to basically find him in the end.
The book is so much into art and gives in-depth details, so much so that I lost interest. It became really tough as well as boring in between. The book is only good in bits and pieces.
I expected wayyyyy too much from this book, though. It was such a disappointment!
mobyskine's review against another edition
4.0
This book is lengthy and freaking detailed- I honestly had to re-read few chapters at the beginning cause I'm quite clueless with the story line at first.
In love with the writings anyway. Love how Pamuk separated each character to each chapter. I got myself a different vision every time, perspectives and those feels (especially during Shekure's chapters). Question and puzzle, a corpse lying inside a well memorizing his life and the murderer who did it to him, and how the story goes revealing details of each, vividly.
Story telling was done impressively, quite imaginary actually, I didn't expect myself to love reading about master miniaturists past and current (to the book scene) history-- those stories of Hüsrev and Shirin and the famous Persian painter Bihzad were really magnificent. I love the part where Black went to visit Butterfly, Stork and Olive asking them questions and got himself a bunch of stories about signature and style, painting and time as well as blindness and memory (this was my favorite). It was lovely to know few secrets and scandals and the exploration of these miniaturist's artworks.
Most interestingly, Pamuk gave life to certain objects/drawings during the story ride it gave me chills when I read it. My most favorite would be the gold coin and horse (and you get 'death' and 'Satan' as well). As non-human narrators it gave soul to this book, along the journey I could see how it was all related to each other, in such a way, so beautifully.
A living picture of Istanbul in year of 1950s, rich representation of Ottoman Empire, story of miniaturists, a murder mystery with love and friendship in between, and its astonishing finding. I was actually right about the murderer but later I thought I was wrong cause the story suddenly playing hints and such that I go ah damn it who the heck are you!
What a great reading journey (minus the clueless me at the beginning), my first Pamuk anyway and love it. "I bring my color to the page, it's as if I command the world to 'Be!' Yes, those who cannot see would deny it, but the truth is I can be found everywhere."
In love with the writings anyway. Love how Pamuk separated each character to each chapter. I got myself a different vision every time, perspectives and those feels (especially during Shekure's chapters). Question and puzzle, a corpse lying inside a well memorizing his life and the murderer who did it to him, and how the story goes revealing details of each, vividly.
Story telling was done impressively, quite imaginary actually, I didn't expect myself to love reading about master miniaturists past and current (to the book scene) history-- those stories of Hüsrev and Shirin and the famous Persian painter Bihzad were really magnificent. I love the part where Black went to visit Butterfly, Stork and Olive asking them questions and got himself a bunch of stories about signature and style, painting and time as well as blindness and memory (this was my favorite). It was lovely to know few secrets and scandals and the exploration of these miniaturist's artworks.
Most interestingly, Pamuk gave life to certain objects/drawings during the story ride it gave me chills when I read it. My most favorite would be the gold coin and horse (and you get 'death' and 'Satan' as well). As non-human narrators it gave soul to this book, along the journey I could see how it was all related to each other, in such a way, so beautifully.
A living picture of Istanbul in year of 1950s, rich representation of Ottoman Empire, story of miniaturists, a murder mystery with love and friendship in between, and its astonishing finding. I was actually right about the murderer but later I thought I was wrong cause the story suddenly playing hints and such that I go ah damn it who the heck are you!
What a great reading journey (minus the clueless me at the beginning), my first Pamuk anyway and love it. "I bring my color to the page, it's as if I command the world to 'Be!' Yes, those who cannot see would deny it, but the truth is I can be found everywhere."
dyno8426's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Wrapped underneath a murder mystery is a questioning of the purpose of art and the artist's role in practicing their skills. Context set for discussion is Turkey during the Sultan's rule (in some unspecified past, probably 1400-1500s) when Turkey was mainly an Islamic state. Kings during those times commissioned and patronized artists not just out of a love of art, but also for regulating the quality and content of art. Driven by Islamic conventions and constraints of not allowing figurative representations of God, the conservative artists are confronting the liberal ideas of individualism. After the initial facetious criticism of the European art, there is a secret thrill and fear about its influence that is permeating in the local artistic circles of Istanbul. Like any new idea and the freedom it brings for the artists to experiment, the Turkish orthodox artists are gripping on to their conventional styles and culture more threateningly for a sense of sensibility and out of apprehension. The status quo is being challenged and we see the main characters - who are primarily the official monarchy-recognized artists working under Sultan's orders and Islamic word - rebelling in their own ways. The waves are choppy and the miniaturist culture of Turkey is being rocked. To be more specific with the points of conflicts, these artists criticise the philosophy of focusing on money rather than being gratified with the opportunity to illustrate for Sultan, the religion of Islam and for the love of literature. The European style of signing artists name and establishing individual authority conflicts with the idea of Turkish humility and servitude of putting the art in front of artist by not claiming any individual mark on the art. There's even criticism of creating art just for art sake, devoid of a noble purpose to augment the popular Turkish literature or depicting religiously historic events. There's a strong connection between the written word and the art that tries to represent the artist's interpretation of the literature. Self expression is a condemnation at such a time and place - this itself feels strange and unsettling for its orthodoxness when art today is valued for the artist's intent and identity. Art today is encouraged for pushing the boundaries of convention and valued for its radicalism that stems from an honest, unadulterated expression of the artist's self.
By sticking to creating art only for serving literature, it tries to keep artist's personal ideas out of art. By removing their signature, it takes away any of the artist's claim on art. It sacrifices this in the name of respecting past masters. It subsumes the individual in the image of the collective. It encourages submission to the anonymity of the collective. It maintains the equilibrium of the old tradition. By advertising and proclaiming the inheritance of the perfections of the past, it hedges the creativity of new styles as "imperfections". In order to understand how can such an attitude towards art be born out of religious policing, think along these lines: they believed that the God has created all the beauty in this world in perfection, so the masters of art have spent centuries trying to perfect their skills and techniques in order to get closer and closer to this perfection in representation. Any "modern" instinct to deviate from this perfected Islamic style of art was considered blasphemy against the perfection created by God itself. There was also the angle of considering certain humans of utmost importance, placing themselves at level with God, the only one who was considered worthy of being represented in art. This effrontery was considered a temptation by the sin of human arrogance. Another related argument was the conversion of paying importance to art for art's sake, detaching its purpose from serving only as an illustration to an accompanying story. This was considered with a risk of transgression to idol worship which Islam clearly did not consider worthy as well. Finally, only Allah was the actual creator. The painters, by trying to presume what he does, are trying to compete with him as being equally creative, thus committing a sin in this process and making themselves for judgment. This radical thinking put artists in conflict with their artistic instincts.
There is of course a cynicism in text that establishes itself through characters and disruptive agents who are either working as activists trying to revolutionize this Turkish artistic movement, or fighting as conservative vigilantes of the traditional art. Darkness in human lives, their lies, deceit, machinations against each other, manipulations second-guessed and craftily averted, their superficialities and dishonesty in pretending to hold their stations/roles in societies are order of the day. Each two-faced attack is defended against with another two-faced counterattack. This contrasts very nicely and consistently with the higher purpose of religion, art and philosophy that is the at the centre of the conflict and tension throughout the story. The alternating narrator literary instrument works perfectly well for this purpose in this book - each chapter is narrated by one of the characters in first person and the transition occurs kind of seamlessly when characters come across each other and interact. We see each person's "honest" intents, hidden from the outer world, and their spider-like sensibilities to navigate a complex web that they are weaving and avoiding at the same time. Like a cynical theme, they reveal a suspicion of all human beings and the moral degradation that they are possible of due to the vices like greed, lust, envy or pride.
"What we essentially want is to draw something unknown to us in all its shadowiness, not something we know in all its illumination."
Finally, there is this classic question of who decides the authenticity and validity of a work of art? Is it authority? Is art supposed to attach itself to a framework of the masses? Is art's purpose to be conveniently relatable, agreeable with its message/purpose and appeal to human sensibility through harmony? Or is it about individualism? Does it need to communicate the artist's vision however challenging or confronting to mass sensibilities it can be? Is it about honesty of expression and intention that eventually matters - even if it is disruptive and stands out in defiance to the accepted norms? It is a difficult question of subjective opinion of what can be called by the artist and what can be accepted as an art by the viewers? Take the example of impressionism - one can imagine that nobody came up with a school of impressionism with its rules and conventions to be followed to qualify as an impressionist work. It definitely had to accommodate individual flavors and interpretations of impressionistic style. At the same time, there was a harmony and influence that shaped this artistic movement. There needs to be a sense of conformity and organization to collectively label and accept a work within the same movement. This polarity between authority and individualism to qualify a work of art is what makes the integrity of art and the purpose of artist a matter of debate and conflicts. Like in this story, we reflect if we are inheriting the ways to create art. Or are we creating new ways to do that? Is that distinction important and a binary resolution for art? And does it matter to determine the authenticity and validity of art? The conflict in this story models this push and pull, tension, and often violent explosions between the creators and receivers of art.
I do have gripes to document. There is a lot of contextual references to Turkish/Persian/Islamic fables/myths which are referenced to, of course naturally given the historical context, but too much for an outside-looking-in reader like me. It requires effort, not because of its linguistic complexity, but by its volume with an disproportionate feeling of progression and movement. So, you feel as if you read a lot but with a smaller return-of-investment. The whodunit part was less gratifying for a mystery than I would hope. The characters are well-invested in but were somehow less distinguishable for me in their personas and substance than the effort put in them. These are subjective impressions of course and depend on the dynamic process and experience of reading itself. Therefore, I spent a longer time reading it than I thought I would in my excitement when I started it.
By sticking to creating art only for serving literature, it tries to keep artist's personal ideas out of art. By removing their signature, it takes away any of the artist's claim on art. It sacrifices this in the name of respecting past masters. It subsumes the individual in the image of the collective. It encourages submission to the anonymity of the collective. It maintains the equilibrium of the old tradition. By advertising and proclaiming the inheritance of the perfections of the past, it hedges the creativity of new styles as "imperfections". In order to understand how can such an attitude towards art be born out of religious policing, think along these lines: they believed that the God has created all the beauty in this world in perfection, so the masters of art have spent centuries trying to perfect their skills and techniques in order to get closer and closer to this perfection in representation. Any "modern" instinct to deviate from this perfected Islamic style of art was considered blasphemy against the perfection created by God itself. There was also the angle of considering certain humans of utmost importance, placing themselves at level with God, the only one who was considered worthy of being represented in art. This effrontery was considered a temptation by the sin of human arrogance. Another related argument was the conversion of paying importance to art for art's sake, detaching its purpose from serving only as an illustration to an accompanying story. This was considered with a risk of transgression to idol worship which Islam clearly did not consider worthy as well. Finally, only Allah was the actual creator. The painters, by trying to presume what he does, are trying to compete with him as being equally creative, thus committing a sin in this process and making themselves for judgment. This radical thinking put artists in conflict with their artistic instincts.
There is of course a cynicism in text that establishes itself through characters and disruptive agents who are either working as activists trying to revolutionize this Turkish artistic movement, or fighting as conservative vigilantes of the traditional art. Darkness in human lives, their lies, deceit, machinations against each other, manipulations second-guessed and craftily averted, their superficialities and dishonesty in pretending to hold their stations/roles in societies are order of the day. Each two-faced attack is defended against with another two-faced counterattack. This contrasts very nicely and consistently with the higher purpose of religion, art and philosophy that is the at the centre of the conflict and tension throughout the story. The alternating narrator literary instrument works perfectly well for this purpose in this book - each chapter is narrated by one of the characters in first person and the transition occurs kind of seamlessly when characters come across each other and interact. We see each person's "honest" intents, hidden from the outer world, and their spider-like sensibilities to navigate a complex web that they are weaving and avoiding at the same time. Like a cynical theme, they reveal a suspicion of all human beings and the moral degradation that they are possible of due to the vices like greed, lust, envy or pride.
"What we essentially want is to draw something unknown to us in all its shadowiness, not something we know in all its illumination."
Finally, there is this classic question of who decides the authenticity and validity of a work of art? Is it authority? Is art supposed to attach itself to a framework of the masses? Is art's purpose to be conveniently relatable, agreeable with its message/purpose and appeal to human sensibility through harmony? Or is it about individualism? Does it need to communicate the artist's vision however challenging or confronting to mass sensibilities it can be? Is it about honesty of expression and intention that eventually matters - even if it is disruptive and stands out in defiance to the accepted norms? It is a difficult question of subjective opinion of what can be called by the artist and what can be accepted as an art by the viewers? Take the example of impressionism - one can imagine that nobody came up with a school of impressionism with its rules and conventions to be followed to qualify as an impressionist work. It definitely had to accommodate individual flavors and interpretations of impressionistic style. At the same time, there was a harmony and influence that shaped this artistic movement. There needs to be a sense of conformity and organization to collectively label and accept a work within the same movement. This polarity between authority and individualism to qualify a work of art is what makes the integrity of art and the purpose of artist a matter of debate and conflicts. Like in this story, we reflect if we are inheriting the ways to create art. Or are we creating new ways to do that? Is that distinction important and a binary resolution for art? And does it matter to determine the authenticity and validity of art? The conflict in this story models this push and pull, tension, and often violent explosions between the creators and receivers of art.
I do have gripes to document. There is a lot of contextual references to Turkish/Persian/Islamic fables/myths which are referenced to, of course naturally given the historical context, but too much for an outside-looking-in reader like me. It requires effort, not because of its linguistic complexity, but by its volume with an disproportionate feeling of progression and movement. So, you feel as if you read a lot but with a smaller return-of-investment. The whodunit part was less gratifying for a mystery than I would hope. The characters are well-invested in but were somehow less distinguishable for me in their personas and substance than the effort put in them. These are subjective impressions of course and depend on the dynamic process and experience of reading itself. Therefore, I spent a longer time reading it than I thought I would in my excitement when I started it.
msmagoo502's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0