About the Book:

“An elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel set in a mystical, exotic world, in which a gifted young girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire’s history”

“Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. “They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch.” But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora’s mother dies soon after the birth.

Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy.

When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father’s business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life—the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul—a city at the crossroads of the world—intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora’s tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles?

The Oracle of Stamboul is a marvelously evocative, magical historical novel that will transport readers to another time and place—romantic, exotic, yet remarkably similar to our own.”

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is a book that I am amazed with, frustrated by, and passionately undecided about.  So if you are wondering what I thought — I probably can’t sum that up in one simple answer.  Some books that I have read have left an impression because they were written specifically for that purpose.  They are written with shock value and force — and that is exactly what they achieve.  There are some books that leave little to no impression — and they are hard to remember two minutes after you put them down.  Then there are books like this one.  They are impossible to classify because their story is haunting, subtle, and the footprints it leaves in the mind and soul are faint but unmistakable.  But the reader doesn’t realize this until well after they have put the book down, and then find themselves reflecting back on the story, and its message days, weeks and even months after you have read it.  It is a book that even after the story is gone — the memory of the feelings, and your response will be long remembered.  I would almost put this book in the same category as The Road, in one respect — (and I do that very hesitantly because I HATED The Road) which is it is memorable no matter what your response to it is.  But this one I LOVED — and my response was as positive for this one, as it was negative for the other.

This is a book that it isn’t in the plot, or the characters that the power of the read comes from.  Rather, I found that it is in the mysterious nature of the message itself, and the feeling it leaves behind.  It is a book that I think a reader will get a different message every time they read it.  There are elements about the influence of one individual on history, politics, and a troubled world in general.  But there is also an element of the importance of self in the eternal scheme of things.  This book also covers themes from grief, loss, cultural differences in integrated societies, corruption, espionage, and the list goes on.

But my overall insight I gained from this book was in the nature of learning the overwhelming lesson of coming to terms with living with one’s self, before they can ever hope to influence the world around them.  This is the first, and foremost lesson of Eleonora — this 8 year old prodigy child that has intelligence, wisdom, and understanding vastly beyond her years.  And yet — even as a young girl, the lessons of life are still hard to learn for this amazing young woman.  It was this characterization alone that made this book dear and emotionally influential to me.  It reminded me of my own family’s child prodigy — her passion for reading, learning, growing, and living life — even in the face of her frail and troubled little body.  My niece and I share this love of books, and we have both learned to see life through the prism of books.  In some ways this leaves us both a little introspective due to our preference for reading.  I understood the challenges that Eleonora faced, and how she was able to see the world through the magnifying lens of the lessons of her reading.  And if for no other reason than this tenuous connection to this amazing character, I will always love this book.

One thing that did frustrate me about this book was I felt like there were a couple of elements that weren’t as well developed as I would have liked.  I am still wondering what the prophecy was about Eleonora — as it was only passively ever addressed in the book, but I felt like I was missing something significant.  And the other thing that I am still reflecting on to try and reconcile somehow was the relationship between Eleonora and the Bey.  This unusual relationship while strong and influential as to the story, is also somewhat awkward and not quite solidified.  The mysterious nature of the Bey is so all encompassing that I came away not quite sure if he was a presence of good, bad or indifference once the book had ended; I almost felt like he moved through the story like a ghost — haunting the pages, but leaving little evidence of his passing.  However, these are minor issues in the whole scope of the book, and the historical fiction setting which simply made this one an amazing read.

Tags: Clean Reads, Family, Friendship, Government, Grief, Historical Fiction, Loss, Love, Suffering, Young Adult

Category: Clean Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction