A review by alundeberg
Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Did not finish book. Stopped at 32%.

The beginning of Orhan Pamuk's Snow is rather long and boring, but since it is an exploration of the tensions between the East and West, secularism and religion, progressivism and provincialism, and written by the great Orhan Pamuk and the book magic should kick in at any time, I continued reading. I gave it one week of my reading life, made it to page 150 (of 426), and can attest that is still long and boring. For a book about such deep topics, it is incredibly shallow. Ka, a Turkish poet and exile, returns to Turkey after living in Germany for 12 years and heads to the economically depressed Kars, a town located in the equivalent of a Turkish Siberia, to meet up with an old crush and to investigate why so many young women are committing suicide. The women are caught between the state's law forbidding the use of head scarves and wearing them in keeping with their religious beliefs, and their battle is heightened when the director of the local college forbids female students from wearing them on campus. See? Interesting premise. But Ka and all of the other characters are two-dimensional and unlikable, speak in riddles, and seem like part of one long thought experiment. It felt like reading Vonnegut where you're wondering what on earth is happening but without the zaniness and fun. I cannot muster the enthusiasm to plow through the rest of this Snow.