The setting for this strange story is the town of Van, Turkey, and later Istanbul. A young girl born in 1947 to the teenaged second wife of an alcoholic Muslim flees from a sexual predator as a teen, working in the street of legal Istanbul brothels next to a mosque, a church and a synagogue. The silly premise of the title is her recollections of her life as her brain dies in the ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her heart stops when she is murdered and thrown into a dumpster. But her recollections take up the bulk of the book, requiring several hours to read.
The schizophrenic surrealism of Istanbul, with its multiple contradictions is well represented as the prostitute is befriended by a transsexual woman, a gay man, a devout female Muslim dwarf, and a female nightclub singer/dancer. The blending of different religious beliefs and superstitions entwines all the characters with no sense of any contradiction.
After the protagonist’s death and burial in the real Cemetery of the Companionless outside of the city, the ragtag group of friends attempt to retrieve her body to give her a proper burial, in what turns out to be hair-brained hilarious plot that does not go exactly as planned. This is the best part of the whole tale.
As an introduction to the culture of the city that can’t decide if it is Asian or European, Christian or Muslim, cosmopolitan or parochial, this is a good read.
Thanks, Rhynda.
The Passionate Reader 