The Museum of Innocence

To write a very long book about obsession is something of a parlor trick, since no matter how thoroughly the story's narrator explains the reasons for and symptoms of his obsession, the reader may marvel but cannot share it. Pamuk creates a richly detailed portrait of Kemal, a wealthy young Turkish man pathologically in love with beautiful shop girl Fusun, his distant poor cousin. The narrative pace is leisurely as the years pass and nothing happens between them, and John Lee works quietly but deftly to bring Kemal sympathetically to life. The portrait of Istanbul in the '70s drawn by Pamuk and Lee is a marvelous carpet for the claustrophobic space in which the story plays out, but while masterfully imagined and beautifully performed, it has its longeurs. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 14, 2009
Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks readers through a lengthy catalogue of trivial objects, which, though seeming mundane, hold memories of his life's most intimate, irretrievable moments. The main focus of Kemal's peculiar collection of earrings, ticket stubs and drinking glasses is beloved Füsun, his onetime paramour and longtime unrequited love. An 18-year-old virginal beauty, modest shopgirl and “poor distant relation,” Füsun enters Kemal's successful life just as he is engaged to Sibel, a “very special, very charming, very lovely girl.” Though levelheaded Sibel provides Kemal compassionate relief from their social strata's rising tensions, it is the fleeting moments with fiery, childlike Füsun that grant conflicted Kemal his “deepest peace.” The poignant truth behind Kemal's obsession is that his “museum” provides a closeness with Füsun he'll never regain. Though its incantatory middle suffers from too many indistinguishable quotidian encounters, this is a masterful work.