Reviews - 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

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3.77k reviews for:

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Elif Shafak

4.11 AVERAGE

vale_n's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

odarkor's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

tahoorahashmi's review against another edition

5.0

I could clearly see why this book got nominated for Booker Prize. It had me shook from the start!

I didn't prepare a proper review for this one or jot down points but I simply enjoyed the audiobook while quietly listening to it. There was no way I was distracting my mind by pausing after every few minutes because IT'S THAT BOOK thay make you want to talk about so many things at a time, makes you super angry, pause to breathe, get emotional but also makes you want to hear more and more!

Let me explain the title to you guys if anyone of you happen to not know, 10 min 38 sec is the maximum time a person has his memories or conscious after dying. Laila have died and every minute she is remembering something off from her memory, for eg. On one of the mins. she remembers the taste of watermelon. Now the author takes us on a journey on what that taste had to do with her life, why is she remembering it, what was so significant and the back story of it.
Tequila Laila, her birth, her upbringing, her family, her work, her 5 true friends, their lives is all one by one explained in detail. I can't start to explain what exactly her life was about because there were 5 more lives touched and not talking about them won't do justice to the plot but at the same time I don't want to give it all away, YOU UNDERSTAND MY STRUGGLE?!
Towards the end the books pace slightly slowed down for me or maybe it was because I was reading multiple books at a time so I couldn't concentrate much towards the end but overall IT WAS A GREAT GREAT READ!
4.8

ksiazkostany1's review against another edition

4.0

3.75

leona's review against another edition

2.5

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I am in two minds when it comes to my opinion on this book, so I will split this into two parts.

Part 1
The first part of the book focusses on the 10 minutes and 38 seconds after the main character Leila (renamed 'Tequila Leila' by her friends) dies, via a series of flashbacks / memories her mind brings to the forefront as her body shuts down. I was worried this premise would become irritating as I tend to dislike any formats that follow the 'soul waiting to move onto the afterlife' or 'soul looking at dead body and choosing whether to live' sort of model (if that made any sense?), but it didn't annoy me. I actually thought it was a unique take on the 'after death' type stories because the idea of the brain still being active after the body dies allegedly has some scientific backing. Even if reader's are dissuaded by this idea, the beginning 60% of the book didn't lean on it too heavily. Our time is mainly spent slowly understanding what has taken Leila to this point and how from harsh beginnings she managed to make a happy and fulfilling life for herself with her found family.

Leila's early life was interesting to read about, though at times the themes of (spoiler is TW:)

child sexual abuse

made this book incredibly challenging to read. The narrative doesn't shy away from showing the reader all of Leila's traumas, which at times made me feel a bit sick. For that reason I can't say I enjoyed the section of the book focussing on her childhood, though the light found in Leila's friendship with 'Sabotage' Sinan was wholesome respite from the darker themes. I did enjoy the writing of the interactions between Leila and her 'Mother' and 'Auntie'.

In some ways, both of these women have been failed by society. The 'Mother' is not an innocent character, but is generally kind to Leila and enjoys raising her. Despite this both the 'Mother' and 'Auntie' are complicit in Leila's abuse against their will, since they are forced by their husband to protect the abuser over their daughter. The reader is left to contemplate how the 'Auntie' would have responded to news of Leila's death.

One criticism I have is that at times child Leila's inner monologue had lines of such maturity and profoundness that it felt unnatural. I don't feel the dialogue and thoughts of the child characters were realistic to how a child would actually talk and think at times.

As Leila moves to Istanbul,

she continues to face trauma as she is trafficked and raped, later 'escaping' into further sex work. She is attacked with acid and stuck living a life in a brothel under the watch of Bitter Ma. Though throughout this there is some hope, being in Istanbul allows her to make close friends with a wide variety of people. I liked her relationships with Sinan and Nalan, though I feel the others were somewhat underdeveloped. Her eventual relationship with D/Ali was interesting, though there was a sense that his political ideas didn't have enough time to be explored in such a short book. Leila faces tragedy when he is shot dead at an initially peaceful protest. Further on the reader is faced with the regrets of Sinan, as he never confessed his love for her. I couldn't help wishing that things had been different for both Sinan and Leila, who I feel were a much better match for each other. However, Leila's relationship with D/Ali temporarily allows her to live an adult life without sex work but readers are shown that she is not destined for a more traditionally 'normal' life.

Part 2
After the flashbacks end the narrative turns to what happens after Leila's death, spurred on by the actions of her five friends. I feel the book initially slowed down at this point, and hoped it would follow a sort of 'murder mystery' plot.

Instead, Leila's killers are quickly revealed, rather unsatisfyingly. The only person who suspects the truth decides to move to Italy to complete a PHD programme and his father doesn't care about the fate of the female prostitutes he used to try to 'fix' his son. It is established multiple times that there is no justice to be found from the police system. I can understand why the book didn't take the 'murder mystery' route at this stage, but I really disliked the direction the remainder of the story followed instead. I don't feel the murderers' motive was really explored in any depth and it felt like a bit of a cop out when the reader has been pondering the mystery of who killed Leila and why for the first 200 pages of this 300 page book. I also disliked the flip-flopping between some character being named as Leila's nicknames for them, and others just being referred to by their normal names. The nicknames irritated me and felt rather gimmicky (I know it's meant to be a representation of them moving on from their past traumas and becoming new people that own their identity, but I don't care.) Having to read 'Sabotage' and 'Zeynab122' felt slightly tedious and silly compared to 'Nalan' and 'Huymera' after the point had worn off.

I was sympathetic to the friends' plan to get a proper funeral and send off for Leila, and wanted this to be achieved while also showing them working for some sort of change to the way that the dead are treated in Istanbul. Maybe this would have been unrealistic, but surely not as unrealistic as their plan to literally break into a cemetery to exhume her body and bury it next to her deceased husband. I sincerely don't understand the logic behind this turn of the book at all. It's completely illogical, slightly depraved and disturbing, and generally completely rediculous. I feel that this whole section made a mockery of the character's that had been established, and cheapened the rest of the story that had been so carefully and tactfully told until that point. I all but rolled my eyes when they realised they had exhumed the wrong body (I saw it coming that they were going to get the wrong grave somehow as soon as the morgue guy wrote down the number), plus this mistake was rectified in literally the space of a paragraph. I don't understand why this was necessary, was it played for laughs or for tension? Somehow the author expects me to believe that Nalan exhumed the first grave entirely alone (surely digging a 6-foot deep hole on your own isn't that quick) but then had the time to fill that hole and do the same again? And the police haven't looked hard enough to find them yet? After hours of digging? Oh and Sinan got completely pissed and fell into the first grave - again played for laughs.

How did they expect that they were going to bury Leila next to D/Ali anyway? He died about a decade prior, there would certainly be another body already buried next to him. Oops. Guess that question didn't need answering anyway because it turns out the suddenly super religious fortune teller Zeynab just remembered Leila told her she wanted to be sent out to sea. Off they go again! At least that problem is solved - until the police show up and Sinan gets shot. No Biggy! It's fine, he heals right up, none of them get arrested or charged for literally digging up a body and chucking it in the sea. You expect me to believe the corrupt police won't solve Leila's murder, but are fine to let people off who they literally witnessed throwing a body over a bridge? Especially the same people who have faced prejudice from the entire society seemingly up until this point? Sinan's finally free of his mean cheating wife and boring office job he spent a decade studying hard to get, and now they can all live a dandy happily ever after in Leila's flat! Oowee!

My frustration is obvious for this section, since I genuinely feel it ruined the book. It was messy and tactless, completely rushed and filled with complete inconsistencies, plot holes and unanswered questions. I just don't get it.

Overall, I have very mixed opinions on this book, so I'm not sure I would recommend it. Though the dark themes were well handled, the complete tonal shift in the ending really let it down in my opinion. I will rate it 2.5 stars - mainly due to the ending.