The Oracle of Stamboul, by Michael David Lukas
One night in 1877, the city of Constanta, Romania, fell to Russian forces. As the city was falling, Eleonora Cohen was born, brought into life by two Tartar midwives who appeared mysteriously and believed that her birth was the fulfillment of a thousand-year-old prophecy. Prophecy or not, Ellie proves to be an unusual child – a genius or a savant. She teaches herself to read at a young age, alarming her aunt Ruxandra, who married Ellie’s father when her mother died in childbirth. When her father Yakob, a carpet merchant, is called on business to the city of Stamboul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, eight-year-old Ellie stows away in his luggage. In Stamboul she stays at the house of her father’s friend, Moncef Bey, and discovers that Stamboul is lush and teeming with color and life. An American minister, maybe a spy, offers to tutor her and soon rumors of her brilliance reach Sultan Abdulhamid II, who summons her to his palace for an audience. Ellie’s first meeting with the Sultan draws her into a world of political maneuvering and intrigue. Before long, the entire city is whispering. Who is the precocious child whose advice the Sultan is taking on matters of war and strategy? Is she a prophetess or a spy? What will be her role in history?
The Oracle of Stamboul was a wonderful read. The writing was clear but evocative. I felt as though I had fallen into the cacophany of a Turkish bazaar or Ramadan fast-breaking celebration, as though I could hear the strings of the ouds being plucked by maidens in the Sultan’s palace courtyards and taste the flatbread, honey and olives Ellie ate in Moncef Bey’s yellow house. In style, The Oracle of Stamboul reminded me a little bit of Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, only sweeter and more innocent. Even the political intrigues in the book were muted, perhaps because the protagonist was a child. I could read The Oracle of Stamboul again and again just to return to Stamboul in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, to taste the baklava and listen to the music and gossip, and to thumb through the pages of the books in the Bey’s library… and most of all, to revisit Eleonora, who exudes innocence and charm from the first page to the last. Highly recommended.
Bakerton, Pennsylvania is a mining town. It’s a town of company houses and union jobs, of church and family. Bakerton is a town that depends on its coal mines and, in the years during and after World War II, those mines are doing raging business. Baker Towers is the story of those years, told from the perspective of the Novak family: widowed Rose Novak and her five children, Georgie, Dorothy, Joyce, Sandy and Lucy. Georgie and Dorothy escape their small-town childhoods, Georgie for the Navy and then Philadelphia and Dorothy for a wartime clerical job in Washington, D.C. Joyce joins the service as well but returns to care for her ailing mother and watch over her younger brother and sister, a sacrifice which goes un-thanked. When Dorothy has a breakdown, Joyce takes responsibility for her elder sister as well, settling permanently in Bakerton to watch life pass her by. Meanwhile, Georgie has “made good” in Philadelphia but remains haunted by what could have been his life, had he stayed home and married his small-town sweetheart, and Lucy struggles with her sense of self and perspective after being spoiled by her mother all her childhood. Each of the Novak children wrestles, in his or her own way, with the legacy of growing up in the shadow of Baker Towers, the two massive piles of mine refuse that serve as the town’s most commanding landmark.
Newland Archer is Old New York. A favorite Fifth Avenue son of the Gilded Age, he moves effortlessly and seamlessly through its rigid social hierarchies. And with his impending engagement to May Welland, widely regarded as the most beautiful, elegant and unattainable of the New York belles, Newland’s place in society is secure. The union of Newland’s family with May’s will bring together New York’s two most powerful ruling clans. But May’s family, the Mingotts, in addition to being powerful, has its unconventional elements. May’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, nee Mingott, has just returned to New York, fleeing a disastrous marriage to a Polish Count. New York is scandalized by Ellen’s vaguely foreign ways and her seeming incomprehension of the delicate social balance she has upset simply by imposing her presence and asserting her right to be free from a “scoundrel” husband. Responding to calls of the family matriarch, May’s grandmother Catherine Mingott, Newland rallies around Ellen as a good soon-to-be Mingott son-in-law should. He gently smooths over her social stumblings, even using family connections to persuade the revered van der Luydens to rescue Ellen’s reputation when the rest of New York conspires to snub her. But as Newland finds himself drawn more and more into the role of Ellen’s champion, he simultaneously becomes deeply infatuated with this woman who understands art, literature, and the value of good conversation in a way that his chosen wife never can and never will. Newland chafes and struggles painfully with the bonds of New York’s expectations for him – wanting nothing more than to desert May and run away with Ellen. But is he, in the end, capable of choosing love over convention? And does he even really, in his heart of hearts, want to choose?
covered in flour 