September 13, 2021
Grief is the point of entry for this perceptive debut from Seçkin, the story of a young Turkish American college student’s complicated summer in Istanbul. Sibel, the daughter of immigrants, visits Istanbul before her senior year, ostensibly to help her paternal grandmother, who has Parkinson’s. She is there with her blond American boyfriend, Cooper, a helpful, culturally sensitive type who quickly becomes of a favorite of Sibel’s large, opinionated extended family. Sibel, on the other hand, is increasingly irritated by him, particularly as he nags her to visit the grave of her father, who died unexpectedly the previous winter. But Sibel has found it difficult to grieve a man with whom her relationship was difficult, and who, as she comes to discover, was keeping some pretty hefty secrets. Seçkin moves with poise from Sibel’s modern-day, deadpan tone to the stories of her older relatives, which are related as stand-alone narratives and are often entangled with Turkey’s tempestuous political history. The grandmother is particularly well drawn, with her “giant beige bras drying out on the laundry rack,” her habit of watching soap operas, and her secrets. Things unfold at a measured pace, with a fairly straightforward plot that’s low on suspense. Like many debuts, this packs a lot in, with varying degrees of success. At its heart, though, it’s a moving family story.
September 15, 2021
Se�kin's idiosyncratic debut novel follows its conflicted heroine through a relatively uneventful but richly strange summer in Istanbul. Turkish American Sibel, who is on summer break before entering her senior year of college, has been dispatched by her family to care for her grandmother, study for her medical school entrance exams, and visit her father's grave. None of those projects is going swimmingly. Instead, Sibel and her grandmother, who has Parkinson's disease, spend their days watching soap operas and eating rich meals. Sibel comes up with every imaginable excuse to avoid visiting the grave, feeling guilty about her father's death because she feels she didn't act quickly enough when he collapsed in front of her. Rather than studying modern medicine, she becomes obsessed with the ancient theory of the four humors--"blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler"--concluding, for example, that "Istanbul is black bile, melancholy, only disguised as a city." Meanwhile, her well-meaning but semiclueless boyfriend, Cooper, who accompanied her, decides to dedicate himself to curing Turkey's ills. As the summer drifts on, Sibel attends one family party after another, pays peripheral attention to the fraught politics of the country--the novel is set a year after the Gezi Park protests of 2013--and investigates her complicated family history, which turns out to be a soap opera of its own, full of kidnappings and sudden deaths. While it's a challenge to keep track of all of Sibel's current friends and relatives, let alone the preceding generations, and while the novel may be more concerned with the ebb and flow of daily experience than with advancing the plot, Se�kin conveys a convincing, often dryly humorous sense of life in a constantly changing city and of the experience of those who, as Sibel notes at the airport, can "choose whichever line is shorter, Turkish Citizen or Foreign Citizen." A captivating treat for those willing to go with the flow.
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November 1, 2021
In the story of Turkish American Sibel and her family's summer in Istanbul, Se�kin packs in a variety of political and psychological realities. Sibel was to spend time caring for her grandmother, who has Parkinson's, sharing the sites of the city with her American boyfriend, Cooper, and studying for the medical college admission test. But her inability to visit her father's grave, her chronic headaches, and her stealthy smoking become indicators that things are not going according to plan. Her introduction to the ancient medical concept of four humors that control human physical and mental behavior leads to a preoccupation and a new framework for life. The pain of grief, the aging of a loved one, the distilled sense of despair from unresolved issues with a now deceased parent, and the murkiness of long-held family secrets are all thoughtfully dramatized. Turkey's political history is integral to the storyline, underscoring how personal choices are inextricably linked to the larger world. Se�kin's lively prose and empathic portrayal of her characters make for an evocative and entertaining first novel.
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