A gripping novel.
Playing out against a meticulously realized backdrop of Turkey in the years following the Cold War that feels thoroughly authentic, this sinister, complex political thriller snakes to a remarkably subtle conclusion.
The Independent on Sunday
This is a story almost impossible to summarize but hard to forget. It's remarkable for its descriptions of the city as it was in the 1970s and as it is now, after the break-up of the Soviet Union has released so much energy around the area. Freely is an almost perversely original writer, sharply observing the world she knows so well and upending all one's suppositions and assumptions.
At the start of Freely's complex, often riveting novel set in contemporary and Cold War Turkey, a journalist known only as "Miss M" returns to Istanbul in 2005 after a long absence at the request of Jeannie Wakefield, whose father, William, was an American spy. Jeannie hopes that Miss M will write an article to help her husband, once Miss M's lover, who's been detained in the United States and sent to Guantánamo. A few months later, Jeannie disappears, leaving behind a long letter detailing events from the 1960s. The main narrative threads-extracts from Jeannie's letter; Miss M's memories of Istanbul from that same period and her present-day account of investigating Jeannie's long-ago indoctrination into a Communist cell, which was at one point charged with the infamous but possibly apocryphal Trunk Murder-interweave toward a quietly stunning conclusion. Both mystery/thriller and mainstream literary readers will be well rewarded. Freely is the English translator of Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk's novel, Snow . (May)
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In 1970 Istanbul, Jeannie, the daughter of an American CIA agent, falls in love with Sinan, a student radical who is alienated from America by its persistent support of Turkish corruption. Sinan is imprisoned on trumped-up charges, but years later, the lovers reunite and marry, living peacefully for a while. Then, without warning, on a visit to the States, Sinan is arrested by Homeland Security as a suspected terrorist, leaving Jeannie scrambling to reach her husband and recover their child from foster care. When Jeannie, too, disappears, a reporter unearths truths that alter our perception of all that has transpired. Freely (The Other Rebecca ), who has translated Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's recent works (e.g., Snow ), possesses an exceptional command of language: her sentences are so apt, they jump out at you. The ending is a letdown, but that is a forgivable failing, all things considered. In this ingenious novel about appearance and reality, it is difficult to predict what will happen next or what it means, but once you start this book, you will not put it down. Strongly recommended for general collections.
A complex novel juxtaposes youthful allegiances and political machinations in Turkey. U.S.-born, U.K.-based translator Freely (The Other Rebecca, 2000, etc.) tackles weighty themes in her long, dark, spiraling story. Her American narrator, journalist M, spent her childhood in Istanbul and fell in love with American-born Sinan, but he rejected her in favor of another American girl, Jeannie, the daughter of an American spy. It's the early 1970s and Sinan is involved with a group that comes to be labeled a Maoist cell, its members accused of murder. Decades later, Sinan and Jeannie marry and have a child. But in 2005, while entering the United States with their five-year-old son, Sinan is arrested and sent to Guantanamo, and the child is put into foster care. Jeannie, ignorant of M's past involvement with Sinan, asks her to write an article to publicize their plight; then Jeannie disappears too. M finds herself reconstructing Jeannie's story while forced to consider how it connects with her own. The novel endlessly revisits an inner circle of characters and repeatedly reinterprets the events, against a background of murky layers of political villainy. Despite its thriller-like components, this is a dense, shadowy and serious work concerned with dirty wars, the plight of Turkey, the pursuit of U.S. strategic interest and the possible existence of a "deep state."Conspiracy theory, nationhood and relationships collide, often obscurely, in a multilayered and earnest, if oddly remote, tale. Agent: Pat Kavanagh/PFD
