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In terms of characters, I didn’t really feel like any of them were very fleshed out. I didn’t feel invested in their lives and found them all to be forgettable. I felt totally apathetic towards them all.
REVIEW: LAST LETTER FROM ISTANBUL by Lucy Foley - Jan Bowles REVIEW: LAST LETTER FROM ISTANBUL by Lucy Foley - Jan Bowles
The book did gain a bit of momentum in the final chapters, but not enough to turn my opinion of the book around. Set during the occupation of Istanbul by allied forces after the First World War, Last Letter from Istanbul tells its story from alternating viewpoints. Those of Nur, a local evicted from her family home and now living with her mother and grandmother in a far less desirable district; the young boy who has been taken in by Nur; George, the army doctor, whose hospital occupies Nur’s former home; and two unnamed characters in the Traveller and the Prisoner. It becomes clear who they are as the novel progresses. The ending elevates this book to something serious and realistic. Yes, reality at its finest. The story nevertheless will capture the heart and mind of the historical fiction afficionados.Now the shadow of war hangs over the city, and Nur lives for the protection of a young boy with a terrible secret. Stumbling through the streets, carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, she avoids the gazes of the Allied soldiers. Survival is everything. Nur has been brought up as the cossetted daughter of a wealthy Turkish man. She is more accustomed to reaching for the next fig than struggling to survive as she must do following WW1. Instead of a return to normality the bungling allies carve the map and create years of future harm, in this case by occupying what they rename as Constantinople.
Last Letter from Istanbul: Escape with this 9780008169107: Last Letter from Istanbul: Escape with this
The ending in particular I found quite poignant and the book itself left me feeling quite melancholy and pondering about what I’d just read. Lucy Foley is a very effective writer and it’s definately worth reading through until the end , until you see the bigger picture. This is a story of Istanbul/Constantinople in 1921 during the Allied Occupation. A sad, but beautiful ode to the people who claimed it as their own, and those who occupied it after the war. It is about a young teacher who saved one of her Armenian pupils from genocide, took care of her elderly grandmother and mother, and learnt the hard truths of what war really was from all sides. She had to come to terms with some truths that was hard to stomach...and forgive. As the lines between enemy and friend become fainter, a new danger emerges something even more threatening than the lingering shadow of war. Last Letter from Istanbul is an evocative and emotional novel: it’s a transporting story of family ties, love and sacrifice, and the noble spirit at the heart of it all, which I came to understand and admire.The house has been transformed into an army hospital, it is a prize of war in the hands of the British. And as Nur weaves through the streets carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, Constantinople swarms with Allied soldiers – a reminder of how far she and her city have fallen. We meet Nur, a young woman living in Constantinople- her beloved Istanbul- a city brutally overtaken by the Allied Forces. She yearns for the life she lost and is reminded daily of the changes: she sees the Allied soldiers laughing and taunting her fellow people. She is surrounded, consumed, by her justified bitterness. She knows the enemy, and judges those who refuse to see the truth, those who have accepted their great losses. But she also knows that in the face of these losses, she has tasted real freedom as well as great inequality. Wir schreiben das Jahr 1921. Istanbul ist nach dem Krieg von Besatzern überlaufen. Die einst so schöne und lebendige Stadt wirkt nun grau und traurig. Viele Familien haben Verluste zu beklagen und mussten ihr Heim verlassen. Unter anderem Nur und ihre Familie. In ihrem Heim ist jetzt ein Lazarett der Britten eingerichtet. Als es Nur eines Tages dorthin zieht, lernt sie den leitenden Arzt kennen. Es scheint sich eine Art Beziehung anzubahnen, die so nicht sein darf. Last Letter From Istanbul delivers little of what is promised by the synopsis, laudatory blurbs etc. This has been hailed as a “timeless love story” riddled with “haunting secrets”, and yet the ‘romance’ to me is achingly bland, simply because the two characters in question didn’t seem to connect on any sort of emotional level. The claim to romance is specious at best. As for the ‘secrets’, the mild twist for me was far too little too late. The descriptions of the city are raw yet lyrical, the descriptions of war brutal yet brilliantly evocative and detailed. Hard to read in parts due to the obvious reality of it all.Men are are capable of some awful things. The characters, as varied as a small Turkish boy and a Scottish doctor make this a rich tapestry of a historical read.
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