Red Dress in Black and White

March 9, 2020
In Ackerman’s wry if convoluted latest (after Waiting for Eden), the story of an unhappy marriage is suffused with pointed commentary on Turkey in the months following the 2013 Gezi revolt. Catherine, an American, lives in Istanbul with her Turkish husband, Murat, a real estate developer, and their adopted seven-year-old son, William. Catherine and Murat each sacrificed early artistic ambition, she for the marriage and he for his career, and she finds comfort in an affair with Peter, a freewheeling American photojournalist on a Cultural Affairs grant for a loosely defined art project. After Catherine hatches a plan to flee to the United States with Peter and William, Murat intervenes with the help of an American diplomat. Much of the book’s action takes place on the day Catherine tries to leave in November 2013, interspersed with flashbacks to pivotal moments in the characters’ lives—Peter’s coverage of the protests to contest the development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park, Murat’s complicated dependence on Istanbul’s “reliably corrupt” government for business, and the shocking disclosure of William’s birth mother’s identity—that add weight to the story of a marriage and a city embroiled in conflict. Still, the big reveal arrives too late and doesn’t quite offer enough payoff to justify such dense plotting. This falls short of Ackerman’s best work.

Istanbul is a major character in this lean, intricate audiobook, which makes Maggi-Meg Reed's elegant evocation of atmosphere essential. She beautifully communicates place names, the pace, the smells, the lights and darks of Istanbul, where an American wife and mother named Catherine is deciding to leave her Turkish husband for her photographer/lover, neither of whom is going to like it. Istanbul, part in Europe, part in Asia, is half familiar, half rather frighteningly not. No one in the story is likable, certainly not the Americans; all are transactional, which is not to say uninteresting, though it makes for a rather cool and intellectual read. Comparisons with Graham Greene are apt, high praise, and Reed warms the text with an accomplished, nuanced, and sympathetic performance. B.G. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine