The Flea Palace

excellent book, the ones that are neatly from Elif Shafak- It is interesting the way in which the writer has structured the book , with the beginning idea of ideas as lines , it ends in same line. The garbage is the connector , and we -readers- come across the inhabitants of the Bonbon Palace through different chapters and situations. It is possible to gather that the inhabitants in some way are like the building , they are very special in their idiosyncrasy and psychology. As reader we know some pieces of information because we have the knowledge of a previous chapter and some words connect people and situations. I really recommend to read this book if we are following Elif Shafak- It is easy to read and not easy to put aside !!!

I really wish I could read this book in the original language. The lines and large phrases of thought are incredibly broad stroked and give a wonderful third dimension to the flow of the book. But there is a problem - the language (and perhaps the author would chide me on the use of the word here) is often grammatical stilted. Can someone get this woman a better translator? A jewel of a thinker and a brilliant intellect.

I loved the authors book The Bastard of Bagdad but I wasn't able to get into this book of hers, The Flea Palace. I was expecting a continuous story line but after getting into the story, I realized it was a collection of short stories about people living in this one apartment complex in Istanbul. As typical for me, if I have an expectation of what the book is about, I get disappointed if it's not what I had expected. I do very much like this authors writing though this particular book wasn't my favorite.

This is Elif Shafak's second book I've started, (I'm not letting myself finish off The Bastard of Istanbul TOO quickly) and I loved it. It started off a LITTLE slow, but then it picked up and I finished it in a day. Well worth it.

I have not enjoyed a novel this much in years. It was not the mystery of the novel but the beauty of the writing and the finely drawn, fascinating characters and atmosphere that kept me hooked. I was so sad to see it end! If I could, I would take off a half a point for some errors in usage that the editors should have picked up ("raised" for "razed"), which distracted me from time to time.

a very good read.

The French writer Georges Perec in his "La vie, mode d'emploi" once described all the inhabitants of a building (in Paris). Elif Shafak does the same, but in a much more superficial way (without the ingenious-maniacal math-phobia of Perec) and located in Istanbul. Some pieces are pretty funny (the barbershop scenes for instance), and the relations between the inhabitants intriguing to follow, but I had the impression to read a kind of film scenario with no real storyline; the relatively theoretical introduction by the supposed author (about the relationship between truth, deception and nonsense), and its more or less surprising sequel at the end, reinforced my feeling of unsatisfaction. What remains is an impression of the bustling life in an Istanbul apartment block, nothing more, nothing less. There was a rather intriguing addendum by Shafak, "Dreaming in English" in which she defends herself against the criticism that she writes her novels in English, not in Turkish. I didn't know she did. She argues that having almost always lived outside Turkey, she's attracted by 'the flexibility of its (English) anatomy and the versatility and openness of its vocabulary'; but she sees her seperateness from Turkey also as a strength: the distance allows her to write more freely about Turkey and to explore more deeply what it means to be Turkish. I have my doubts about this point of view, but perhaps I ought to explore the literature of famous exiles. Shafak ends with stating that the real homeland of novelists and poets is none other than Storyland, and that really is a bit too simplistic to my taste

An interesting cultural snapshot, but a bit lacking in plot. By the time the seemingly irrelevant details make sense, you've forgotten you heard them, as the cast of characters is large and varied and the story switches between them with every chapter. Lovely prose, but not my favorite Shafak novel. (Impossible to beat The 40 Rules of Love)