Looking at the title of this post freaks me out a little bit, because we just had a long, cold, snowy winter, and even though flowers are coming out, it’s hard to believe that winter is finally over. (I hope it’s finally over — we did have snow as recently as the 8th or 9th, but it didn’t stay on the ground.)
Well, what better way to celebrate the end of winter than by . . . um . . . reading a book set in a snowy winter, with a whole town snowed in, and snow a constant recurring motif and . . . actually, there may be many better ways. But I’m still ploughing through Snow, by Orhan Pamuk.
This Nobel Prize-winning novel is set in the city of Kars in Turkey, to which the poet Ka returns after many years of political exile in Germany. He is there to write a newspaper article about a wave in suicides among Muslim girls forced by the state to remove their head scarves, but also to meet up with a beautiful ex-classmate, Ipek, who has recently become divorced.
It’s really good. I can’t tell you much more than that because I’m still not particularly far in. Actually, I’m about halfway done, but I still don’t think I could summarize the plot. It has one, surely, but it’s still kind of a weird book — good, but weird. A little too cutesy with the foreshadowing sometimes, maybe.
But good.
The weather here turned chilly after a nice hot summer like hot spell. Winter and summer are fighting over spring, I think. I haven’t yet read anything by Pamuk but you sure make Snow sound good. I’ll be curious to know what you think of it when you are finished reading it.
I hope I don’t see anymore snow until December! We had our fill this year. I saw your post on LT and thought I would stop by. I am just getting my blog started so thanks for the update. Erin
Hi, like Erin, saw your post on LT. I’ve never heard of this book or this author, but you do make it sound interesting! I’ll have to add it to my ever growing ‘to be read’ pile
I read Snow a year or so back and I had a lot of trouble finishing it, so I am very curious about your thoughts. I do have a couple of essays by Pamuk on my TBR-pile.
I’m just glad that I don’t live on the prairies — apparently it was in the twenties last week (Celcius), and now they’ve just gotten a freak 1.5-feet of snow dumped on them! Good grief.