Almost a Turkish Soap Opera becomes more interesting as you read on. As the drama goes into full swing, it's difficult to put the book down even for a short break. The characters of this book are colorful; perhaps many of them resemble the characters in some Turkish soap operas, though I haven't watched one.
Action begins when the 25-year-old Adel -- handsome, business savvy, and sometimes quixotic -- leaves his home in Istanbul and arrives at Los Angeles with his best friend Kamil. He meets Nora, who visits LA from Vancouver, Canada, and then falls for her, but the meeting is cut short because Adel is manipulated by his grand uncle, a domineering, contemptible figure to Adel's family. Mirwan, a pawn of Adel's grand uncle, reports Adel to the U.S. immigration services. Adel is detained and subsequently deported back to Turkey. After a short stay in Istanbul, Adel heads for Vancouver where Kamil lives with his new wife Ayca. There, at the cultural crossroads of the West and the Middle East, Adel, his cousin Yonka, Kamil, Nora, Ayca, and other characters intersect.
Adel's presence (and perhaps Kamil's as well) in Vancouver was arranged by Adel's grand uncle, whose aim is to marry Adel to his beloved granddaughter Yonka, a cunning and egocentric woman who lives a life of decadence. Adel plunges into the whirlwind of Yonka's schemes (into the untenable and unconsummated marriage) and of falling in love with Nora again. Eastern and Muslim culture collides with Western ways and ideas and brings the characters together at times and pulls them apart at others.
To many Western readers, the culture of the Middle East, which still exercises arranged marriages along with dowries and marriages among cousins, could be strange. But we also find Jane Austin's world strange, which is not that long ago, as well as some of today's American societies in which polygamy and other taboos are tolerated; this book teaches us that we should understand the cultural differences in the world to live together more harmoniously.
The book is scene-oriented with relatively short chapters, and thus a page-turner -- I thoroughly enjoyed it. Adel's father is weak in front of his domineering uncle, but toward the end, he stands up against him and he and his poor family finally get what they deserve. The novel has an unexpected and highly satisfying ending, with dramatic irony in a literary sense. After reading the book I also watched snippets of the eponymous movie on the Internet, written and directed by Anne-Rae Vasquez; the book and the movie went together very well and the movie augmented my sense of the characters. And I am looking forward to reading and seeing more of the work by this talented writer-artist in the near future.
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