My Name Is Red

Pamuk's prose is as exquisite and rich as the elucidations it describes. This is a dense, atmospherically fevered book, which demands a high level of patience and attention from the reader, perhaps mirroring the patience of the miniaturists. Written in the first person, with multiple narratives, this is a book full of unreliable witnesses, and as the various stories of the narrators unfold, the truth of the disappearance slowly emerges. The sense of place and time are carefully constructed and diligently maintained throughout the novel, which, like Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose, far exceeds the genre of literary historical crime to become a hypnotic meditation on religion, love, time, patience and artistic devotion. --Iain Robinson

Reader Reviews:

Awful book (0/1 people found this helpful)

What a dreadful read. This is a terrible translation that has people speaking beautifully and then suddenly using foul language, as though the translator couldn't find the right way to say what the author wanted. It makes for a horribly disjointed read. I found this book incredibly slow too.....and gave up on p.68. Most members of my book club gave up too.
The story is not unlike that of The People of the Book by Geraldine Brookes which is infinitely more readable and enjoyable.

mis-packaged meditation on art, aesthetics and religion (2/2 people found this helpful)

Firstly, despite the way Faber have decided to promote this book, it's not a murder mystery in the way those words are usually understood: so if you're looking for a thriller with clues, twists and turns, this definitely isn't it. Partly for that reason I think the reviews which compare it with Eco's The Name of the Rose are off-point. That was a book which playfully refers to the intertextual nature of all reading; reading isn't what's at stake in Pamuk's book at all.

Instead it is a profound and engaging meditation on the contrasting and sometimes conflicting views of eastern and western aesthetics of art, especially visual and religious art: or, rather, the religiosity of art.
Yes, there is a murder which kicks off the story, and another one mid-way through (very brutal and disturbing) but who did it, really isn't either the point or the driver of this book. There's also a love story at its heart, but one which draws on the persian epics that it constantly refers to and so half invites and half resists comparisons with western love stories.

Other reviewers have complained about the narrative voices all sounding the same, and that is the case, but becasue Pamuk isn't interested in writing a character-driver novel. Also don't read it if you're expecting a lush historical full of exotic detail as that's not the type of book it is (Gregory, Chadwick et al)

Altogether this is an intellectually-accomplished and brave novel that deals with hard subjects. It's not a difficult read but it is a slow one, one that you need to take your time over and digest, not a page-turner where you can't wait to find out what happens next. I think it's an important book but it won't be to everyone's taste.

verbose, slow and irrelevant (1/3 people found this helpful)

apart from the first chapter that sucks you into the story, the rest of the narrative agonisingly slow, irrelevant, and repetitive. how many times do we need to be told that fifteen century miniaturist go blind towards the end of their career. I personally thing that being told two or three times is probably the maximum, so being told 25 times, over 150 pages is overmuch. Likewise, seven pages to describe the inner thought of a tree is excessive and uninteresting, and it is also irrelevent when you eventually get told that the tree is a pictorial representation of a tree. very sad and pompous effort. i suggest most of the people who rated the book highly never went past the initial chapter - which is the right thing to do.

REVIEW : MY NAME IS RED (2/2 people found this helpful)

The story of the book 'MY NAME IS RED' revolvs around the Turkey of sixteenth century. But the point Orhan Pamuk makes is the recent one.

The gist of the story is that certain communities block modernity in any field of life. Even the artists are prevented, even beheaded, for disobeying the so-called religious truth.

In 'MY NAME IS RED' there are number of point of views, and the several story tellers. But that has barely affected the flow of the narrative: Orhan Pamuk is such a master of keeping continuity.

Primarily the novel walks around the life of the miniature artists living in Istanbul of late sixteenth century. But it depicts all types of human follies and demonstrates how the negative forces sway over the positive ones.

Narrative techniques Orhan Pamuk displays in his novels justifies the Nobel Prize given to him. He loves his city of Istanbul and he praises the city for its unmatched history of arts and the human tragedies the wars had given to the city.

Dense (2/2 people found this helpful)

This is a complex book. I found it extremely slow going, as it was clearly working on so many novels, and had so much to say that I almost felt that I should read each page twice and inwardly digest. As such it cannot be said to be a page turner, despite the fact that it is a thriller of sorts.
It revolves around the work of Muslim artist, Black, who is trying to work out who murdered one of his colleagues and why. It plunges us as the reader into the history of Muslim art, and the great theological questions of the day. It is an intense narrative full of asides and stories through which the main plot twists and turns.
This can be a richly rewarding book, but if you are looking for an easy read, or one which reveals its secrets after just a little thought, it probably isn't for you.

Orhan Pamuk

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