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.

March 15, 2020
At the intersection of love, art, and politics, characters within a romantic triangle and a few just outside it discover that they're puppets whose strings have been pulled by a bureaucracy and whose fates are connected in ways beyond their control. The latest from a novelist who's both been a Marine and worked in the White House opens with a reception for photographer Peter, an American expatriate in Istanbul, to celebrate his provocative series of shots from a recent protest in Istanbul. Among the attendees is Catherine, another expatriate American and the wife of a high-profile Turkish real estate magnate; she is having an affair with Peter, and much to his surprise, she's brought her young son, William, to the reception. Addressing the party is Kristin, an American diplomat in Cultural Affairs, who has apparently helped facilitate the photographs (and perhaps the protest that they document). The reception is being held at the apartment of Deniz, the director of the gallery presenting the exhibition. Catherine's husband, Murat, waits at home for his wife and son, who return much later than he had anticipated. There is a blowout; Catherine and William flee to Peter, and she hopes they can return to America with him. The rest of the novel alternates the narrative tension of a woman caught between two men over the course of a single day, with flashbacks that provide context on the marriage, the affair, the protest, and the much larger web in which these characters are caught, mostly without their knowledge. The novel is deftly plotted, though the characters themselves seem more like pawns in the author's narrative scheme, lacking much flesh-and-blood depth, though perhaps this is a reflection of the "moral hollowness" that Catherine suspects in herself, as she is suspended between a marriage of convenience and what might seem to be an affair of convenience. As Kristin says, "Each of us has to live....No matter how we do it." A novel in which relationships develop more from pragmatism than passion.

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April 1, 2020
Ackerman's follow-up to the stupendously good National Book Award finalist, Waiting for Eden (2018), is set in Istanbul from 2006 to 2013. Catherine is unhappily married to Murat, a prestigious real-estate developer responsible for many of the revitalization projects across Istanbul, and they have a son they adopted in unusual circumstances. Murat's personal and private worlds have been rocked by two events. The fallout from the Gezi Park protest, a defining event in Turkey, has halted many of his projects, and Catherine's attempt to leave Murat for her longtime lover, Peter, an American photographer of questionable talent, has left him struggling to maintain appearances. Lurking behind and attempting to orchestrate many of these events is Kristin, who works for the shadowy cultural affairs department at the U.S. consulate. Ackerman's trademark prose, defined by stillness and rich descriptions, evocatively captures the strained nature of contemporary Turkish life. While markedly different from Ackerman's earlier fiction, this slow-burning novel of intrigue deftly hints at a shadowy world that exists just out of frame and is one that lives long in the memory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 1, 2020

This latest novel from National Book Award finalist Ackerman (e.g., Waiting for Eden) focuses on the interactions of a half-dozen characters in the course of one 24-hour period in 2013. Thanks to Ackerman's unaffected style, this absolutely riveting novel moves rapidly, unlike some one-day novels (think of James Joyce's painfully difficult Ulysses). Catherine is a young American living in Istanbul, a patron of the arts, who is married to famous Turkish architect Murat, a passive man who seems more interested in saving his faltering business than his failing marriage. Their friend Kristin, a scheming Machiavel, serves as the cultural attach� at the American embassy, while Kristin's friend Deniz is curator of the museum where Catherine is a trustee and for which Murat is designing a new wing. American photographer Peter is a beneficiary of a grant awarded by Kristin through the embassy. Amid the ups and downs of all these interconnected characters, William, Catherine and Murat's adopted son, turns out to be the story's unsuspecting fulcrum. Though this is not a mystery proper, there is mystery here. In Agatha Christie fashion, Ackerman gathers his characters for what appears to be the grand finale but saves the true reveal for the very end. VERDICT An attention-grabbing, cleverly plotted, character-driven yarn. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]--Michael Russo, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2019

When hotshot Turkish real estate developer Murat is told by his American wife that she wants to return home with their son and her photographer lover, he asks an American diplomat to prevent this catastrophe--and inadvertently reveals secrets and corruption in the couple's personal lives and, more largely, Turkish society. National Book Award finalist Ackerman's first fiction without a military setting.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.