Snow by Orhan Pamuk Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Snow
Book Review: slow moving book
Summary: 3 Stars
I was anxious to read this book with my book club. I tried about 150 pages of the book and simply could not get into the story. It was way too slow moving. Very interesting plot summary on the back of the book, but I couldn't hang in there.Book Review: something went wrong
Summary: 3 Stars
When I started to read this (the first novel I have read by this author) I thought it was going to be excellent and give me a real insight on Turkish and Islam mentality and tell an interesting story. While it more or less succeeds in the former the plot limps, falters and ultimately becomes boring. I think there is a problem with the emptiness of the central character who is not very interesting or involving. Which is a pity because there are many interesting characters and nice touches to the story. I will certainly check out some of his other works - I may be wrong but I feel that (maybe) by the time Pamuk wrote this work he was too powerful to be cut down to size by pre-publication critical feedback.Book Review: tedious to the bitter end
Summary: 3 Stars
Boy was this hard to finish! What is all the fuss about???? I never bought into caring about Ka's trials and tribulations. Every walk down the street took 3 chapters. Enough already with the excrutiating detail! The only saving grace was the interesting but occassional glimpse into how observant religious muslim's resent how they are viewed by 'westerners'. I found his characters uncompelling and un-evolved. And what was that whole silly side-bar about writing that statement in the hotel for an invented german journalist? The whole thing irritated me.
What's more, Ka's being madly in love with ipek irked me to no end. How much more sexist could one get? He didn't know her (as ipek herself pointed out), he didn't even care about her as a person, but rather, cared that she represented his finally finding someone (who cares who it is, as long as she is beautiful). It was just plain offensive to me. I just simply couldn't care less about his poems, or about the friend who comes back to re-piece his travels. Was the old friend and Ka old lovers? Sure seemed that way to me. Anyway, I was determined to finish the book, in the event that it got much better at the end. I heard 'Red' was really good, but am now gun-shy to torture myself like that again.
I do have a nagging question that reveals my ignorance about turkey's politics...how much of what he wrote about was true? How much was fictionalized? Is all that spying and wire tapping and following people true? Is there no such thing as privacy? I wish that, while i was reading it, i could have turned to someone to say, does this really happen in the way he is describing it? While i was reading it I did find a few newspaper blurbs about Turkey's failed case against him, which was alarming in and of itself, but seemed to confirm what he was writing about.
Not that there weren't moments that intrigued me...but the whole thing was really tedious to get through..just glad i did.