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oliviabilgin's review
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
skconaghan's review
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
nnyam33's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
vkealy's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
damyyg's review against another edition
4.0
“Tabii romanına nasıl başlayacağını sen daha iyi bilirsin ama kitabın, benim son sahnedeki monologlarım gibi hem içten hem de bir masal gibi olmalı. Hem yaşanmış bir hikaye gibi sahici, hem de bir efsane gibi tanıdık olmalı.”
Bana ‘Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın’ kitabını kısaca tanıt deseniz size yazarın kaleminden çıkmış bu cümleler ile tanıtırım. Eski Yunan miti olan Oidipus ile İran efsanesi olan Sührab’ı, günümüzde geçen bir baba-oğul hikayesi ile harmanlayıp okuyucuya sunması ile güzel bir kitap ortaya çıkartmış. Ara ara okurken tutukluklar yaşayıp kitabı bıraksam da daha sonrasında elime alıp bir solukta okudum. Kitabın yarısına kadar dişinizi sıkın derim çünkü kitap daha sonrası bir canlanıyor tam canlanıyor. Güzel bir kitaptı o yüzden bir şans verim derim.
Bana ‘Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın’ kitabını kısaca tanıt deseniz size yazarın kaleminden çıkmış bu cümleler ile tanıtırım. Eski Yunan miti olan Oidipus ile İran efsanesi olan Sührab’ı, günümüzde geçen bir baba-oğul hikayesi ile harmanlayıp okuyucuya sunması ile güzel bir kitap ortaya çıkartmış. Ara ara okurken tutukluklar yaşayıp kitabı bıraksam da daha sonrasında elime alıp bir solukta okudum. Kitabın yarısına kadar dişinizi sıkın derim çünkü kitap daha sonrası bir canlanıyor tam canlanıyor. Güzel bir kitaptı o yüzden bir şans verim derim.
jdintr's review against another edition
5.0
This is an astonishing book: astonishing for its ambition (Pamuk is paralleling both the Greek playwright, Sophocles, and the Persian bard, Fedowsi), its relevance to today, and its depth. I have loved Pamuk since reading My Name is Red, but I never thought he would again publish something as insightful as Snow, which I consider to be his masterpiece.
Step aside Snow, I'm here to say that The Red-Haired Woman is every bit as significant a book for western readers, as well as for Turks.
Snow (2002) was a novel set in the hinterlands at a time when Islamism was resurgent in rural Turkey. A secular writer journeys to Van to investigate suicides by girls wishing to wear headscarves, rekindling a long-lost romance in the process. The book explained to readers like me the passions of Islamists, while examining the issues from the POV of a westernized Turk. It was an amazing story and an astonishing piece of cross-cultural translation on the eve of the Iraq War.
Picking up 15 years later, The Red-Headed Woman isn't set in the hinterlands, but in a suburb of Istanbul in a Turkey where Islamists are dominant and President Recep Erdogan is in the process of overturning the secular republic established by Kemal Ataturk 100 years ago. The two books are complimentary, but TRHW is far more ambitious.
So many of Pamuk's novels revolve around obsession and unrequited love. Here, the 16-year-old Cem, abandoned by his father and forced to save money for college as an apprentice to a well-digger, falls hard for the title character, whose name is given several times in the book but who remains The Red-Haired Woman to the end. When he isn't busy with the tiring work of hand-digging a well 30 meters into the earth, Cem mopes around the village of Öngören, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman.
After spending the night with TRHW, Cem makes a mistake on the work site the next day and flees the town, thinking that he has killed the kindly master well-digger who has become like a father to Cem. At this point in the plot, one might think that Pamuk has Dickens on his mind: a teenage boy has fallen on hard times but flees the scene of the crime with great expectations in store.
Ha. Pamuk has far greater lights in mind.
Two stories enter the narrative as Cem grows into adulthood: Oedipus Rex, which originates in Greece, the culture to Turkey's west, and the Shahnameh, the epic saga of the kings of Persia, the culture to Turkey's east. Both stories deal with abandoned sons; both stories end in tragic murders.
Pamuk is the perfect writer to illustrate the tensions that pull Turkey eastward as well as westward. For western readers like me, he balances secular sensibilities with a deep love for his homeland. He is an illustrator of culture every bit as precise as those featured in the Topkapi Palace.The novel's close ties to these timeless classics do not spoil a thrilling, surprising ending.
The novel reaches back into the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1960s and 70s and spans time to the present-day battle between infertile, wealthy secularists and revenge-minded nationalists/ Islamists (especially in the wake of the 2016 failed coup attempt).
The allegory is strong, the tragedy cuts like a knife. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Step aside Snow, I'm here to say that The Red-Haired Woman is every bit as significant a book for western readers, as well as for Turks.
Snow (2002) was a novel set in the hinterlands at a time when Islamism was resurgent in rural Turkey. A secular writer journeys to Van to investigate suicides by girls wishing to wear headscarves, rekindling a long-lost romance in the process. The book explained to readers like me the passions of Islamists, while examining the issues from the POV of a westernized Turk. It was an amazing story and an astonishing piece of cross-cultural translation on the eve of the Iraq War.
Picking up 15 years later, The Red-Headed Woman isn't set in the hinterlands, but in a suburb of Istanbul in a Turkey where Islamists are dominant and President Recep Erdogan is in the process of overturning the secular republic established by Kemal Ataturk 100 years ago. The two books are complimentary, but TRHW is far more ambitious.
So many of Pamuk's novels revolve around obsession and unrequited love. Here, the 16-year-old Cem, abandoned by his father and forced to save money for college as an apprentice to a well-digger, falls hard for the title character, whose name is given several times in the book but who remains The Red-Haired Woman to the end. When he isn't busy with the tiring work of hand-digging a well 30 meters into the earth, Cem mopes around the village of Öngören, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman.
After spending the night with TRHW, Cem makes a mistake on the work site the next day and flees the town, thinking that he has killed the kindly master well-digger who has become like a father to Cem. At this point in the plot, one might think that Pamuk has Dickens on his mind: a teenage boy has fallen on hard times but flees the scene of the crime with great expectations in store.
Ha. Pamuk has far greater lights in mind.
Two stories enter the narrative as Cem grows into adulthood: Oedipus Rex, which originates in Greece, the culture to Turkey's west, and the Shahnameh, the epic saga of the kings of Persia, the culture to Turkey's east. Both stories deal with abandoned sons; both stories end in tragic murders.
Pamuk is the perfect writer to illustrate the tensions that pull Turkey eastward as well as westward. For western readers like me, he balances secular sensibilities with a deep love for his homeland. He is an illustrator of culture every bit as precise as those featured in the Topkapi Palace.The novel's close ties to these timeless classics do not spoil a thrilling, surprising ending.
The novel reaches back into the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1960s and 70s and spans time to the present-day battle between infertile, wealthy secularists and revenge-minded nationalists/ Islamists (especially in the wake of the 2016 failed coup attempt).
The allegory is strong, the tragedy cuts like a knife. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
tbueno's review against another edition
5.0
Muito bom livro que descreve a obsessão entre pais e filhos e a relação confituosa entre eles, como contadas muitas vezes em fábulas e épicos de diversas culturas.
Orhan Pamuk cria magnificamente uma história de filhos e pais em uma eterna repetiçã de decepções e tragédias, com pano de fundo que aborda outras questões como os impactos da modernidade sobre uma Istambul cada vez mais cosmopolita, os conflitos entre o secularismo e o mundo fantástico abordado pelos clássicos do oriente médio. Na história, é explorada questão sobre o quanto influenciamos e ao mesmo tempo somos reféns de nosso próprio destino.
"A Mulher Ruiva" é ao mesmo tempo uma fábula, uma tragédia e um incrível romance moderno.
Orhan Pamuk cria magnificamente uma história de filhos e pais em uma eterna repetiçã de decepções e tragédias, com pano de fundo que aborda outras questões como os impactos da modernidade sobre uma Istambul cada vez mais cosmopolita, os conflitos entre o secularismo e o mundo fantástico abordado pelos clássicos do oriente médio. Na história, é explorada questão sobre o quanto influenciamos e ao mesmo tempo somos reféns de nosso próprio destino.
"A Mulher Ruiva" é ao mesmo tempo uma fábula, uma tragédia e um incrível romance moderno.
mirkilly's review against another edition
5.0
The Red-Haired Woman explores father-son relationships following our main character Cem, from when he was 16 until his adulthood. The story and the main idea center around two myths - the famous myth of Oedipus Rex who unwittingly murders his father and the one from a Persian poet Ferdowsi, whose epic Shahnameh contains a mirror of Oedipus, in which a father mistakenly kills his son. These two classic tales become the obsession of the novel’s protagonist and the determinants of the novel’s action. If you were wondering why the book is called The red-haired woman, well, you guessed it - she is the one that connects fathers and sons in this story and the final chapter is from her point of view, which I really liked
" Kada odrastaš bez oca, ne shvataš da svet ima težište i granicu, misliš da možeš sve... Ali posle izvesnog vremena ne znaš šta da radiš, trudiš se da u životu nađeš neki smisao, neki centar, i počneš da tražiš nekoga ko će postaviti granicu i reći ne."
"Želimo da nam otac bude snažan i odlučan, da nam kaže šta treba i šta ne treba da radimo. Zašto?Da li zato što je teško prosuditi šta treba, a šta ne treba da radimo, šta je moralno i ispravno,a šta grešno i pogrešno? Ili zato što uvek osećamo potrebu da čujemo da nismo krivi i grešni? Da li uvek postoji potreba za ocem ili čeznemo za njim onda kada smo zbunjeni, kada nam se svet raspada i kada nas nešto muči?
Sorry that the quotes are in my mother tongue!! haha
" Kada odrastaš bez oca, ne shvataš da svet ima težište i granicu, misliš da možeš sve... Ali posle izvesnog vremena ne znaš šta da radiš, trudiš se da u životu nađeš neki smisao, neki centar, i počneš da tražiš nekoga ko će postaviti granicu i reći ne."
"Želimo da nam otac bude snažan i odlučan, da nam kaže šta treba i šta ne treba da radimo. Zašto?Da li zato što je teško prosuditi šta treba, a šta ne treba da radimo, šta je moralno i ispravno,a šta grešno i pogrešno? Ili zato što uvek osećamo potrebu da čujemo da nismo krivi i grešni? Da li uvek postoji potreba za ocem ili čeznemo za njim onda kada smo zbunjeni, kada nam se svet raspada i kada nas nešto muči?
Sorry that the quotes are in my mother tongue!! haha
pearloz's review against another edition
4.0
A man recounts an incident that occurred during 1 particular month of his youth--and the issues from that incident spring up later in life. It's like he took a page from his diary from some time in the 80s, wrote half a book about it, and took another page well into adulthood with those same characters, and wrote the rest of the book. It's a very good book, and Pamuk is a very good writer. He turned what could've been a conventional, hum-drum book about a teenager falling in love with a woman into a novel of great depth, a novel about memory, and fear, and fatherhood. I mean, sure, it's clearly written by a dude, and has some lame, dude-ish ideas (I mean, the woman is in her mid-30s but gives a 15/16 y/o a bone because he's her ex-lover's son, and this is passed off as some playful dalliance...but I digress), but the writing is strong and compelling.
ajkhn's review against another edition
4.0
Like many Pamuk novels (and really, a trop Pamuk borrows from Turkish literature writ large: Everything Is A Compelling Mystery When Your Protagonist Is An Idiot.
It's a nimble book, more similar to Pamuk's earlier White Castle or Black Book than the later books he's gotten famous for. The whole premise, of whether we are bound to myths or able to chart our own paths, is compelling and foregrounded. And Pamuk does a good job emphasizing all the Bad Dads in our modern lives (capitalism, engineering, religion, modernity itself, actual literal bad dads) and how we're all a bit captive to the path in front of us.
I get the feeling this book would tick some folks off in how anti-modern it is, even with the funky ending that I won't spoil. It's all myth and tradition, all the way down! The book jacket bills it as "east and west" but I don't think that's really what he's trying to do with Oedipus and Sohrab. It's more "all the stories are all the same."
It's not one of Pamuk's greatest works or a magnum opus or any of that. But it's a pleasant, unique, read in its own right.
It's a nimble book, more similar to Pamuk's earlier White Castle or Black Book than the later books he's gotten famous for. The whole premise, of whether we are bound to myths or able to chart our own paths, is compelling and foregrounded. And Pamuk does a good job emphasizing all the Bad Dads in our modern lives (capitalism, engineering, religion, modernity itself, actual literal bad dads) and how we're all a bit captive to the path in front of us.
I get the feeling this book would tick some folks off in how anti-modern it is, even with the funky ending that I won't spoil. It's all myth and tradition, all the way down! The book jacket bills it as "east and west" but I don't think that's really what he's trying to do with Oedipus and Sohrab. It's more "all the stories are all the same."
It's not one of Pamuk's greatest works or a magnum opus or any of that. But it's a pleasant, unique, read in its own right.