I was completely bored by this book for the first 250 pages, doubting my ability to appreciate good literature. But I stuck it out and it was well worth it. The book, I thought, developed in an amazing way. All of the things I was most impressed with came late, such as the conflation of drama and reality seen in the two theater productions and in the very book itself; the eerie way both Ka and Fazil identified with their dead friends and loved their buddies’ women; and the stunning way that Pamuk ended up explaining Ka’s obsession with snowflakes and his silly snowflake diagram for organizing his poems (and which ultimately revealed to the narrator the answer to a critical question about Ka and Ipek). And of course the ending, when he plays with sympathetic, liberal Western readers by making us wonder if we can ever get past simplified, essentialized images of poor people and Muslims, even when a writer as skilled as Pamuk takes care to never depict his characters through such stereotypes. It was definitely unlike anything I’ve ever read.