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Tag: Book Review

Wringing Out the Old Year (Newsletter)

Dear Readers,

Light rain has fallen all day here in 01754 as I write this. More is forecast, and the sun might not come out for the next four days. Once upon a time it would have been snow. I guess I’m thankful for that, as I don’t feel up to shoveling right now.

I hit the Holidaze with a bowel disorder, bookended by Covid—first my wife’s and then mine. When she got it a few days before Christmas, it didn’t lay her entirely low, but it did a number on her travel plans. She had to cancel her flight to Turkey, where she wanted to usher in 2023 with her family, and had to settle for Skyping.

Somehow I avoided picking up her ailment for two weeks, but on New Years Day I tested positive at home. That was weird, because I didn’t feel sick, and still don’t. Not so peppy, but that’s a small price to pay for the honor. Maybe my three boosters helped.

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One Day in Istanbul, the Star of Elliot Ackerman’s Newest Novel

A review of Red Dress in Black and White by Elliot Ackerman. Alfred A. Knopf, 2020, 272 p., with reference to Liar’s Candle by August Thomas, Scribner, 2018, 310 p.

Because I am an American married to a Turk and have written about her country in memoirs and a novel, I tend to gravitate to novels by Americans that are set in that big, messy, volatile country that’s hard for outsiders to get their heads around. Even though it has been a liberal democracy almost a century, modernity still clashes with tradition, poverty mushrooms in the dark shadows of wealth, and as in many countries of late—sadly including mine—its politics have grown distinctly illiberal. As one of Elliot Ackerman’s characters cynically remarks, “There is no Turkey, only Turkish elites.”

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