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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best living novelists, 8 Jun 2007
Snow, the story of Ka, a poet who visits the troubled city of Kars, is narrated from a viewpoint four years after the events. The narration is (intentionally) cold, hazy and distant, as our narrator tries to piece together the events that have befallen poor Ka. The plot is brutal and tragic, centred on death and failing relationships. This isn't an easy read. If you want an uplifting novel, Pamuk isn't your man. But there is a lot to be admired in the way the sense of pathos and loss builds up to a beautiful crescendo.
In places the prose is brilliantly inventive. There is a whole chapter comprising a taped final conversation between a murderer and his victim (it's chilling, because you know how it will end). The alternations between the present day and four years previously work very well. A powerful subplot revolving around a book of lost poetry reflects the mood of the whole novel wonderfully. The reviewer who describes this as "Dostoevsky without a plot" is not so far off the mark, but Pamuk doesn't aim for the richness of characterisation Dostoevsky specialised in. He's more in the business of evocative, symbolic description. His settings are as alive as his characters, if not more so.
Pamuk's cities are achingly beautiful, but they're also creepy, claustrophobic and waiting to knife you in the back. Stepping into a Pamuk novel is at the same time like looking over a glorious panorama and like looking under your bed. In Snow, Kars is brought to life with the skill a Pamuk fan would expect. My only caveat is that it's not as compelling as The Black Book, a stunning evocation of 1980s Istanbul. If you want a full idea of what this sensational novelist is capable of, try The Black Book.
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34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dense, intense, a mountain of a book., 26 Sep 2006
Describing 3 snowbound days in a remote Turkish town, this novel examines politics and religion in modern Turkey. Pamuk examines the uneasy relationship that exists between nationalism and Islam, and the conflict between a desire for prosperity & progress and the fear of a creeping Westernisation that threatens to undermine Islam and republicanism. Alongside this Pamuk sets Kurdish nationalism, and never lets the reader forget the legacies of Armenia, and Russian colonialism.
The novel is fascinating in its analysis of Islamic extremism, particularly the examination of women's place in Islam and in Turkish society. Pamuk doesn't flinch from allowing his characters, on all sides of the arguments, to express their opinions and their doubts. In the environment of restricted free speech that exists in Turkey, you can but admire his bravery.
I have to admit that reading this book was hard work, partly because the subject matter is so foreign to my liberal Western background, but also due to the intense prose style. But it is a book that merits close attention and is worth persevering with - you really need to read the whole thing to fully appreciate it.
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
IMPORTANT AS WELL AS WORTHWHILE READ, 30 Mar 2006
In the light of Turkey's (and Britain's) desire that it should join the European Union and play a larger role in European affairs and in the light of the Turkish judiciary's recent attempts to prosecute the author for speaking out about some of the dodgier parts of its past, this book should really be required reading for all. It gives a vivid picture of the conflicting factions at play in the political game there from the secular Attaturkists to the fundamentalist Islamists, from conservatives to revolutionaries, from the devoutly religious to the devoutly atheist. And most shades in between.But this is a novel, not a political tract and Pamuk also manages to invest his vast array of characters and opinions with faces and feelings. They are by turns fleshly, lustful, attractive, impetuous, wise, irrational, outrageous, subversive, camp, theatrical, etc. The whole piece is enclosed by the snow of the title which envelops and isolates this colourful gallery of (largely) misfits and the remote town in which the events recounted take place. This piece of symbolism certainly gives the book its distinctive colouring. It is perhaps post-modern in an unnecessarily convoluted way. The book is about the poet, Ka, and is largely seen from his point of view. But it purports to be written by Orhan, a close friend of Ka, who may or may not be the same Orhan who actually wrote the book. Confusing or what? Helpful to understanding it all? Not particularly. The other major cop-out is the failure (plotted into the story, it's true) to reproduce any of Ka's poems, a major clearing of writers' block which is supposedly sparked by his visit to the town. Having aired those gripes, I would still maintain that this is a good read as well as being a salutary one. The characters are rich and varied, the plotting is involving, the political and religious dilemmas and dichotomies it presents are fascinating and important. Turkey sits, as it has through history, at the meeting-point of Europe and Asia. This novel gives a strongly limned portrait of this Janus nation as well as a fine picture of its characters as more universal human beings.
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