The architect's apprentince
by
Elif SHAFAK
I can't believe I have finished the reading of this book... I still cannot believe it... I had the intention to abandone it several times. I have started the reading by beginning of June and only finished it off now, by middle of July. Though all the other books I have read by the same author took me around a week each. I was always attracted by them like a magnet... But not this one.
What happenned and why it's been so?! If I would have known this book was like that I would probably refuse to read it. It was available at Edinburgh Library. I said: ok, I like how Elif Shafak is writing, so I'll borrow it.
The Architect's apprentice only intrigued by the first pages, and after that, the book became kind of a historic book... Kind of a Turkish history of the 16th -17th centuries, but enriched with dialogues and details, especially of food and clothes and esthetic ones as well. For all this chapeau (!) to the author. The point is that I would have prefered a straight forward development of the actions. And only in the last several chapters the intriguing atmosphere reappeared and the denoument took place as well. When Jahan the protagonist found out who was responsible of all the unhappy things that occured during all the construction processes.
The symbol of the whole story is the elephant Chota. An animal that was inviting to calmness, but as well to normality, when he didn't feel well, or the escape when he wanted to die all alone somewhere far from the place where he was living.
I will not go too deep into the story and end up the review here, but not until mentioning the presence of the enumarations Elif Shafak used to write the book. Probably the onliest book i've read until now with such abundance of enumarations of animals, food products, tools etc etc etc... That is really impressive.
In the above picture we have an example of those enumarations. This time the author used collocations not just simple words, which have given more complexity to the picture.
In the above picture we can see an example of food enumeration. Very impressive.
In the end I want to recomend the book, even though I have offered 4 out 5 on goodreads. The onliest thing that I did not like it was that I had to impose myself to rich the end of the book. That was not easy. I did not feel that thing which makes you think night and day about what happened next. You might ask me why then I did not abandone the book, and I'll answer: because I have learnt finally to finish off what I have started. To end up with procrastinations. Otherwise I would have said: well, I don't feel I want to read this book anymore :) Too rich for me ;) Too many descriptions and details and enumarations :)
Belle lecture, dear friends!
12/07/2022
Edinburgh
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