This really was a good book - the kind that makes you think a lot! It took me longer than usual to read - quitting for a day or two, then going back to it. I think this was because there was so much to think about in it - discourses on history and mythology, comparative religion, and female emancipation, to just how psychologically unbalanced the camel actually was. Laurie's rambling, and sometimes giddy, narrative style kept me moving right along with the travelers; but hearing what they heard, seeing what they saw, was tiring. I guess that's what traveling with a disparate group of wayfarers does to you. The fellow travelers were as fascinating as they were opinionated, and I enjoyed the dialog even when I didn't agree with it. I also enjoyed the look at the Anglo-Catholic church. The unexpected ending was heart-rending, but on reflection, I don't see how it could have been different. And life does go on. ( )

(#47 in the 2008 Book Challenge)

I should probably warn people that I'm on a weird kick of 1950s English popular fiction by women. And this was enormously popular when it came out. A young woman accompanies her aunt and a priest on a tour of Turkey. There are a lot of jokes about Anglicanism, many more than I thought were possible, actually. This was intriguing on several levels -- it's fairly interesting right there on the surface, and also a great look at the time when it was written, and fun to compare and contrast to what passes for popular literature today. It's also one of those books that ends up being about something quite different than you suspect: it would appear to be a book about touring around Turkey on a camel, and it turns out to really be about personal moral responsibilities and obligations.

Grade: A-
Recommended: It's a strangely good book, but it has that unsettling quality that sometimes happens when a book isn't timeless ... it's very much of its time and reading it involves significant emotional discordance. ( )

Can you give a book 10 stars? I stumbled across Rose Macaulay while browsing through the "New York Review of Books Classics". It turns out that the Towers of Trebizond was a great hit in the UK and US back in the 1950's. I highly recommend taking a look at those wonderful reprints of older books. All praise to the New York Review of Books.

This book is a mostly hilarious sendup of conventional society (primarily British, but others do not escape unscathed) in the form of a travelogue and memoir of a youngish upper middle-class English woman who travels to Turkey with her Aunt Dot and their High Anglican minister Hugh Chantry-Pigg. A camel, Billy Graham sightings, and a disappearance into Soviet Russia are involved in this wonderfully witty tale. Macaulay also sprinkles some philosophy along the way and a sudden and sobering twist at the end.

By turns quirky, eccentric, funny, and thoughtful, The Towers of Trebizond is a nugget well worth rediscovery. ( )

A deceptive novel which has a lot more to say than appears on the surface. The opening sentence is a pure joy and sets the tone for the arch and very wry humour:
" Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

Often dubbed a "classic", it made me wonder what is the definition of a classic? For me it is something which continues to hold truths even beyond the context of its specific setting and time. Jane Austen and Shakespeare, for example continue to astound because you can't help wondering "How did they know THAT?" when something seems particularly apt to the 21st century human condition.

There is a lot in this book that fits that definition. Many of the observations contained within stand true some 50 years later. The idea of people writing their "Turkey books" is amusing and the humour droll. One need only think of the recent "running away to southern France / Spain / Tuscany" genre. The musings on the place of spirituality in various manifestations, and the intersection between pragmatism and organised religion is interesting.

I am taken by the fact that we never know the narrator's gender. The name "Laurie" can be either male or female, particularly in the English context (eg author Laurie Lee was male; ).The "illicit" relationship could almost equally be a homosexual relationship. The behaviour of the narrator provides certain clues, such as riding the camel and offering lifts to Turkish country men. I doubt whether that would have been at all possible for a lone travelling female. On the other hand, the narrator talks at one point about a non-possible future with his/her lover (definitely a male) and "their children". Of course the lover has children within his marriage, and the narrator may have expected to marry and have children. Male homosexuals commonly did (and still do) just that.

In other passages, the narrator drinks alone with another male companion in a bar, not something which could even necessarily be accommodated in 1950s Turkey for male and female acquaintances.

Not everyone is going to like this book or engage with the themes, but if you enjoy well-written descriptions, musings on the human condition which are effused with wry irony, then give it a go! ( )

This book was puzzling, but I still enjoyed savoring the writing. There were times when I laughed out loud at some of the goings on in this book. I wasn't sure why she introduced the chimp/monkey towards the end, and the tragedy that develops with the lover that she kills is a little mind numbing, but well worth the read. ( )