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Love in Exile

by Ayse Kulin

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453558,523 (3.33)None
The bestselling author of Last Train to Istanbul returns with a tale of love defying all boundaries. Sabahat, a beautiful young Muslim woman, is known in her family for her intelligence, drive, and stubbornness. She believes there is more in store for her life than a good marriage and convinces her parents to let her pursue her education, rare for young Turkish women in the 1920s. But no one--least of all Sabahat herself--expects that in the course of her studies she will fall for a handsome Armenian student named Aram. After precious moments alone together, their love begins to blossom. Try as she might to simplify her life and move on, Sabahat has no choice but to follow her heart's desire. But Aram is Christian, and neither family approves. With only hope to guide their way, they defy age-old traditions, cross into dangerous territory, and risk everything to find their way back to each other. One of Turkey's most beloved authors brings us an evocative story of two star-crossed lovers inspired by her own family's history.… (more)
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A lyrical novel about the author's family history. The story ends with her parents marrying and her birth, but the focus until that point appears to be her aunt Sabahat's forbidden relationship with Aram, an Armenian. Interspersed are other family dramas, all presided over by the kind patriarch Resat Bey.

This book took me a long time to finish. The language was lovely and the slow pace of the novel necessitated my slowing down my reading speed. I loved the characters, though the large number of them and their relationships to one another took a long while to get straight. The backdrop for the novel is Turkey becoming an independent state and modernizing. This isn't something I was familiar with before, but I found it fascinating to see the change reflected in this one family through the years. Interspersed with the family's story is that of Muhittin, a young and promising engineer. Eventually, his story dovetails with that of the family's, as he is the author's father.

I will admit to be a bit disappointed that the focus changed toward the end away from Sabahat and Aram toward Muhittin and Sitare, because I really did want to see how their story resolved. I am heartened to see in the epilogue that the two eventually married but wished it was actually depicted in the pages of the book since it was such a large focus of the story.

Still, a lovely novel of a country and time that many in the US don't know much about. I'll definitely have to read more by this author. As an aside, the translator did a wonderful job, I thought.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. ( )
  wisemetis | Sep 14, 2022 |
I found myself extremely disappointed in this book, enough that I had to DNF @ page 101. It got to the point that I dreaded picking up the book; I even dreaded just the mere thought of the book. A part was I was just bored with it, but I had such high expectations that when they crashed and burned, I was bummed.

The story of a forbidden love between an Armenian boy and Muslim girl in a 1920s Turkey going through so much societal change and revolution is storytelling gold. The fact that it came from the author’s personal family history is just butter on top. Being so close to the past Armenian genocide (in which our male lead lost family) and in a Muslim county trying to find a balance between Western culture and Eastern values, this story carried tons of potential.

The author at least shined in the setting department. We get an intimate look at the family dynamics of a Muslim family in flux, going through drastic changes in their society and values system. The lush world of Islamic Turkey with a mixture of Christianity made for interesting reading.

Unfortunately, the author didn’t take full advantage of the book’s potential, giving us a muddle of too many characters and a choppy writing style.

The slew of characters is the main thing that got me. I could have understood the full range of family members for Sabahat and Aram; after all, they all have a bearing on how these two develop as individuals and how their relationship would grow or not.

However, when you get to a whole new family only remotely connected with Sabahat by a historical family origin place, I lost myself. I’m sure that given time or further story-telling, it would have become clear how everyone was connected. But I’m already lost in all the names so I couldn’t personally hold out to that point.

The way the story was divided up also threw me. Sabahat’s and Aram’s story was told in a chunk in the beginning. Then we cut away to the different family with all new people, family dynamics, and history. Maybe if things had been interwoven from the beginning, this sudden cut would have been easier to swallow. I don’t know. That sudden break is why I lost interest so quickly; since I was starting to get invested into our lovebird’s story, coming to completely different characters was hard.

To me, this book was full of misguided hope and broken expectations. It started out strong with a great setting and world-building. The story of forbidden love between our leads started to engage me. Yet, the author made a sharp veer into a new story and family with no warning. This lost my interest quick and made me dread trying to dive back in. So I didn’t. This book may work for another individual, but not me, it’s not enjoyable at all the way it’s written.

Note: Book received for free from a GR giveaway in exchange for an honest review.
1 vote Sarah_Gruwell | Aug 1, 2016 |
Set in Turkey during the 1920's, this is the story of a family, with the focus on Sabahat, one of three sisters in a closely-knit household. Sabahat falls in love with a friend from early school years, but their love is star-crossed, because he is an Armenian Christian and her family is well-to-do and Muslim. They promise to remain true to each other over the years, in spite of their respective parents' refusal to allow them to marry. Meanwhile, there are other family dramas to keep the plot moving to its conclusion. Apparently quite autobiographical, this historical fiction will be of particular interest to anyone fascinated by Istanbul and Turkey. ( )
  sleahey | Jun 23, 2016 |
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The bestselling author of Last Train to Istanbul returns with a tale of love defying all boundaries. Sabahat, a beautiful young Muslim woman, is known in her family for her intelligence, drive, and stubbornness. She believes there is more in store for her life than a good marriage and convinces her parents to let her pursue her education, rare for young Turkish women in the 1920s. But no one--least of all Sabahat herself--expects that in the course of her studies she will fall for a handsome Armenian student named Aram. After precious moments alone together, their love begins to blossom. Try as she might to simplify her life and move on, Sabahat has no choice but to follow her heart's desire. But Aram is Christian, and neither family approves. With only hope to guide their way, they defy age-old traditions, cross into dangerous territory, and risk everything to find their way back to each other. One of Turkey's most beloved authors brings us an evocative story of two star-crossed lovers inspired by her own family's history.

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