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    Gardens of Water: A Novel
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    Gardens of Water: A Novel
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    Gardens of Water: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Gardens of Water: A Novel

    Written by Alan Drew

    Narrated by Mark Bramhall

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Powerful, emotional, and beautifully written, Alan Drew’s stunning first novel brings to life two unforgettable families–one Kurdish, one American–and the sacrifice and love that bind them together.

    In a small town outside Istanbul, Sinan Basioglu, a devout Muslim, and his wife, Nilüfer, are preparing for their nine-year-old son’s coming-of-age ceremony. Their headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter, İrem, resents the attention her brother, Ismail, receives from their parents. For her, there was no such festive observance–only the wrapping of her head in a dark scarf and strict rules that keep her hidden away from boys and her friends. But even before the night of the celebration, İrem has started to change, to the dismay of her Kurdish father. What Sinan doesn’t know is that much of her transformation is due to her secret relationship with their neighbor, Dylan, the seventeen-year-old American son of expatriate teachers.

    İrem sees Dylan as the gateway to a new life, one that will free her from the confines of conservative Islam. Yet the young man’s presence and Sinan’s growing awareness of their relationship affirms Sinan’s wish to move his family to the safety of his old village, a place where his children would be sheltered from the cosmopolitan temptations of Istanbul, and where, as the civil war in the south wanes, he hopes to raise his children in the Kurdish tradition.

    But when a massive earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the Basioglu family is faced with greater challenges. Losing everything, they are forced to forage for themselves, living as refugees in their own country. And their survival becomes dependent on their American neighbors, to whom they are unnervingly indebted. As love develops between İrem and Dylan, Sinan makes a series of increasingly dangerous decisions that push him toward a betrayal that will change everyone’s lives forever.

    The deep bonds among father, son, and daughter; the tension between honoring tradition and embracing personal freedom; the conflict between cultures and faiths; the regrets of age and the passions of youth–these are the timeless themes Alan Drew weaves into a brilliant fiction debut.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 12, 2008
    ISBN9780739358825
    Unavailable
    Gardens of Water: A Novel
    Author

    Alan Drew

    Alan Drew graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2004. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train and elsewhere. He lived in Turkey for three years, and was there at the time of the 1999 earthquake. He lives and teaches in Cincinnati, USA.

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    Reviews for Gardens of Water

    4/5

    146 ratings32 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A good book, well written with great prose. Very difficult subject material, but well-worth the take on the differentiation of Kurdish culture with the rest of the world.
    • 3/5
      This 2008 novel by an American who taught in Turkey is laid at the time of the 1999 Izmit earthquake, and has as its characters a Kurdish family living in he area of the earthquake and an American family trying to help the eartquake victims. But the 17-year-old son of the American family gets entangled with the 15-year-old daughter of the Kurdish family, to the horror of her parents. It is a classic problem, reminding me, I suppose illogically, of the unforgettable novel of A. J. Cronin, Hatter's Castle, which I read 19 oct 1946. I could not help but be struck by the readiness of the Moslem parents to hate those who did not conform to their moral code, deplorable as their daughter's lapse was.
    • 4/5
      Like many good books, this is a complex story with many layers and ideas. Although there were characters on all sides of these lines, they were all sympathetic and their points of view were valid and made sense. Sinan is caught between his inclinations, his fears, his faith, and the place he holds in society. In the end I think that is what I gleaned from this novel - that no one can just "be". There are always these outside pressure to be something else, to comply, to see the world from someone else's view. There is tragedy in this novel and also something approaching grace.
    • 4/5
      A really interesting story about a Muslim family coping with life in the aftermath of an earthquake while still dealing with the lingering effects of Sadam Hussein and the PUK fallouts. On top of that they struggle with an influx of do-good American Christians who want to help the physical needs of the people but also slip in some spiritual help. For a people used to their traditions and customs, the "new" way of the Americans and their culture is mind-boggling.

      The book reminds people of the unseen reprecussions evangelism can have, but also highlights what hardships befall a town devasted by a natural disaster. This is a complex novel, because family dynamics also play a huge role in the story and the characters' interactions. There's a lot here to digest. A great story.
    • 4/5
      This is an adult book, but two of the main characters are teens, a Muslim girl and an American boy, who develop a relationship during a disastrous earthquake and the difficult time afterwards. A reviewer called it kind of a Turkish Romeo and Juliet with Kurds and Americans- definitely something teens might be interested in reading. It was well written and a fun way to learn about another culture.
    • 4/5
      Audio review.Powerful and beautifully written story of two families – one Kurdish, the other American -- and two faiths – Christianity and Islam – set in Istanbul, Turkey where East meets West, just after the devastating earthquake of 1999. The great themes of this novel are loss and betrayal, the collision between an agricultural tribal society with a technological urban society, and the manifestations and curses of faith and ideology – and honor.Drew hasn’t written a small novel but a great one that tackles the major issues warring with each other throughout the Middle East and violently raised by terrorists abroad from their homelands and within them. Besides its literary fineness, it is also an example of the kind of literature that is so worthwhile it should be read by everyone.Heartbreaking to read a story that so well highlights the gulf that exists between the lives and world of those who embrace the 20th C. in contrast to those who cling to a century far back in time. This is a tragic story that illustrates clearly that being simple, honest, moral but blinded by religion and tradition is not better than being worldly, sly, secular and skeptical of monotheism. Sorry, but some ideas are better than others, and some cultures are more civilized – and definitely better – especially if you happen to be born a woman.Islam is not disrespected in this book but it is certainly depicted more unfavorably than in Rabih Alameddine's, "The Hakawati," But that could be the difference between the Islam of the urban Egyptian vs. the Islam of the village Kurd.
    • 3/5
      Sinan and his family are left homeless after a massive earthquake hits Turkey. His young son Ismail is initially thought to have died, but is found alive in the rubble. Their neighbors, an American family, were not so lucky, losing Sarah, wife to Marcus and mother of Dylan. Then Marcus and Dylan join an American relief corp running a camp and convince Sinan and family to live in the camp. Dylan and Sinan's daughter Irem become close; their illicit love is a source of family conflict and exacerbates an existing conflict between Sinan and Marcus.Perhaps my tastes have evolved since a friend passed this book on to me. It had some promising elements but on the whole just didn't work. Dylan in particular: having lived all of his 17 years in Turkey, he was still very American (jeans, personal music player, tattoos & piercings) and prone to cultural gaffes. It also struck me as odd that Marcus and Dylan, bereaved and newly homeless themselves, would become relief workers. Wouldn't they need support as much as any Turkish family? Or does their nationality afford them some special status, uniquely able to rise above personal tragedy and help those "less fortunate"?The novel was also very dry, and didn't generate the emotion it should have given a number of tragic plot elements.
    • 4/5
      An earthquake in Turkey displaces two families who lived in the same apartment building, connecting them forever at that moment in time, yet creating an unbridgeable distance between them. In a sense, both families were already displaced when the earthquake hit. Sinan Basioglu and his family are Kurds living outside the Kurdish homeland, while Marcus Hamm and his family are Americans affiliated with an American missionary school.The teenage romance between Sinan's daughter, Irem, and Marcus's son, Dylan, is predictably tragic. The Hamm family's effect on Sinan's young son, Ismail, is more surprising. Points of tension include Muslim and Christian, fundamentalist and moderate, East-West/Europe-Asia, American worldview vs. Middle Eastern worldview, parents and children, male and female. This novel illuminates cultural divides without imagining resolutions for them.
    • 5/5
      Sinan, his wife Nilufer, 15-year-old daughter Irem, and 9-year-old son Ismail live in a small town outside of Istanbul. They live in an apartment building, and Sinan co-owns a small grocery store with his brother-in-law. As the book opens, the family is preparing for the coming-of-age celebration of Ismail where he will be circumcised, and life is good. Well, Irem is not content and is restless and feels that her parents love Ismail more than her, and she is somewhat correct, in that the Muslim culture does not value women as much as they value men. In an act of rebellion, Irem has befriended Dylan, a 17-year-old American boy who lives with his parents in the apartment above them. His parents are what I would call missionaries with money. After the celebration is over and everyone is asleep, a massive earthquake strikes the area devastating the town. What follows is the disintegration of two families. This is an amazing story with a close-up look at how the American and Muslim cultures clash. The ending was one shock after another that, literally, made me cry and took my breath away. Excellent book; definitely one of my favorites of the year.
    • 4/5
      Seven years ago, Sinan, his wife Nilüfer, his daughter Irem, and his son Ismail moved from their village in Southeast Turkey to the larger city of Gölcük to avoid the dangers of war. Sinan and his family are Kurds and have continued to live as devout Muslims in Gölcük, but when an earthquake hits, they must move into a refugee camp run by Americans, and Irem begins to resist her father’s restrictions. The tensions between Islam and Christianity, traditional and modern, father and daughter play out as the family attempts to piece their lives back together. Overall, I enjoyed this book. Drew tells a compelling story. The plot moves along quickly. The details about the context, the war, and the earthquake are nicely integrated with the story. And the two primary characters Sinan and Irem are complex and well-detailed. Neither is the hero, neither is the villain. They are simply a father and a daughter struggling to understand each other and to figure out how to live in a complex world. My one complaint is that the other characters in the book were not as complex as Sinan and Irem. Both Ismail and Nilüfer are integral to the story, yet each is somewhat one-dimensional.But overall, this is an excellent debut novel.
    • 4/5
      This novel was a maddening read for me. On the one hand it is a fine piece of writing craftsmanship, deftly interweaving multiple themes, characters, and conflicts. On the other hand, it often fails at the points where it attempts to be real, or accurate, leaving the question in my mind as to whether readers who don't have the cultural, religious, and geographic background in which the novel is set are in some way deceived, or even confirmed in their prejudices.This work is a blend of true geographical settings, historical events, and hot cultural controversies such as Muslim-Christian relations, Kurdish-Turkish relations, pro- and anti-Americanism, tradition and modernity, changing gender roles, and others, combined with a fictional plot in which the author attempts to get inside the heads of Kurdish and American players who are caught in and live these controversies. The reader must allow the author novelistic license. But if it is the author's intent at the same time to be historically, geographically, and culturally accurate--which seems to be the case here--then this book needs some serious editing.Here are a few areas that seem deficient. The Turkish words and phrases used by the author are sometimes correct and sometimes glaringly wrong or inconsistent. He needed to have someone correct his Turkish usages, if it was his intention to be accurate. The tent city near where much of the novel takes place is some distance from Istanbul. One could not simply hop on public transport in the days following the earthquake, or even today, and arrive in the old parts of Istanbul in a few minutes. Turkey drives on the right. One cannot look down from the Bosphorus bridge to the water by driving in the far left lane, no matter which direction you go over the bridge. A real clanger: Muslims in Turkey are not buried in coffins. A Muslim girl raised traditionally would never speak of "walking down the aisle" as a way of describing a wedding.Points like these are bothersome not simply as a matter of pedantry but because they lead me to question how well the author has understood traditional viewpoints in Turkey. He works hard to reveal the self-consciousness and mentalities of a traditional family. But if he hasn't got the external facts right, how accurate is he with these deeper matters? Is this novel really a helpful guide to the way that Kurdish people in Turkey think, or the way American expatriate Christians in Turkey think? Too often it struck me that the attempt to explain, for instance, the thoughts of a traditionally raised Kurdish young woman ends up being a back-handed critique of her life from a modern secular point of view. And so the reader who is unknowing is not helped.The handling of description, characterization, plot, tensions, the personal within the political, and other aspects is masterful, and the author is to be commended for this achievement. The book is an undeniable page-turner and a satisfying read from many aspects. But whether it enlightens us -- as it seems to want to do -- regarding the real-life issues with which we must deal in this world is questionable.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It was given to me at a library workshop. I am so glad I read it before putting into the collection. The author uses the love between two teens to highlight the struggle between Muslim and Christian cultures. Although it is a tragic tale, he shows how there can be friendship and tolerance between different cultures.
    • 4/5
      enjoyed the writing, the author made me feel as if I was there. The characters were believable and shows that there's a bit of good in all of us and a bit of bad too. Young love with teens of different cultures. I liked the ending, there was no solid resolution and reminds me that we will live with the outcomes of our choices for the rest of our lives.
    • 3/5
      This audiobook tells the tale of a Kurdish family headed by Sinan. Sinan is trying to stick to the traditional Kurdish values and beliefs he was raised with, but the realities of his changing society make that difficult. Especially when his 15 year old daughter Irem becomes interested in the American teenager living in their apartment building. Sinan becomes even more conflicted when an earthquake strikes and places him and his family is a position of dependence--even indebtedness--to the Americans. He fears getting close to the Americans and yet they seem to only want to help. Can these two families from different cultures live together in peace or will their differences rip them apart?This story is a sad commentary on what can happen because of misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. The audio production was good and the narrator did a good job bringing the middle eastern setting to life in the way he pronounced the words and such. If you like fiction that deals unflinchingly with contemporary issues than this would be a could choice for you. No happy ending is garanteed though.
    • 4/5
      This book begins on the outskirts of Istanbul in 1999 just before a devastating earthquake strikes the area. Two families live in the same apartment building an American family Marucs and his wife and son Dylan, and a Kurdish family with two children Irem and Ismael. The lives of these two families become greatly intertwined when the American's wife dies trying to keep Ishmael safe as the earthquakes strikes. Irem on the other hand is becoming involved with the son Dylan much to the disapproval of her family. She wants more of a life that her mother has, and feels that she is not as important, and not loved as much by her father as Ishmael the son is. After the earthquake the family end up in a refugee camp where they must rely on missionaries who are Christian, and keen to impart their Christian beliefs to those in the camp. So in this book there is tension on many levels, between parents and children, between the Kurdish and American family, between the Muslims and the Christians, and within Irem herself as she is torn between the life her mother has and wanting something more but not being ready to throw away what she has. The characters and their struggles were very real to me. I enjoyed the book. It is not a feel good happy book but a real story that gave you a lot to think about This is a quote from the book that I really liked. It reminds me a bit of the Prophet on children “Our children are not ours. That is our mistake. We think they are. It seems so for awhile – but they aren’t. They never were.”
    • 3/5
      Good parents are always trying to do what they think is best for their children and Sinan, a Muslim Kurd living near Istanbul with his family, is no different. This thoughtful debut novel takes place in 1999 just prior to a devastating earthquake that serves to bring Sinan’s family and the American family of Marcus Hamm together. While Sinan is focusing his attention on the right-of-passage of his son Ismail’s circumcision, his teenaged daughter, Irem, is beginning to flirt with Dylan Hamm, who lives upstairs. Sinan is not a fundamentalist, and, in fact criticizes some basic fundamentalist values and traditions, but he is decidedly conservative and demands submission from his wife and daughter. When the earthquake strikes and Ismail is saved by virtue of Dylan’s mother, the families become uncomfortably intertwined. As Irem feels more neglected and more secondary she gravitates more toward the lure of Dylan and his modern ways. The story provokes many discussion points as it contrasts the traditions and values of Sinan’s Kurdish culture with the good, but proselytizing, intensions of the missionary groups who quickly come to the aid of the citizens in need. The story also carefully considers the cultural bias against the Kurds from their own countrymen. The author lived in Istanbul during the Marmara earthquake and shows sensitivity toward both sides of the story. He is also able to create vivid pictures of the landscape as well as thoughtfully describing the inner feelings of his characters.
    • 4/5
      It seems that there has been a flux of popular fiction recently centered on various Middle Eastern countries & their customs. And while I enjoy learning about them for the most part, I feel like I can read only so many of them. Fortunately, this one didn't disappoint me. If you're looking for an uplifting, happy story, this might not be the one for you. Rather, it deals with tragedy on many levels while interweaving two distinct peoples & religions in a very believable storyline. I felt Irem was a very believable character, wanting desperately to gain some independence but yet not quite ready to leave the comforts of family, something I think many teenage girls worldwide must feel, regardless of culture or upbringing. The novel goes back & forth, with Irem's point of view alternated with that of her father, Sinan, and while the relationship between the two of them is somewhat subtle, Alan Drew does a good job of bringing it full circle near the end. I found the last portion of this book especially engaging, albeit disturbing. Overall, this was an excellent debut novel & one which I would recommend.
    • 4/5
      This book was an excellent character study of the family dynamic in an Islamic, Middle Eastern country. I loved the daughter's struggle between following in her mother's footsteps and allowing the independent woman inside of her to surface. Mr. Drew paints a lush picture of Turkey and has a flair for providing detail without going overboard. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the relationship between family members or the role of women in Islamic societies. I learned some things about Muslims that I did not know before.
    • 5/5
      In many ways Gardens of Water reminded me of A Fine Balance. Alan Drew creates such a sense of place in this book that a felt like I was watching a newsreel. I also came to deeply care for the characters, especially Sinan Basioglu, his daughter Irem and the American Marcus. Sinan tries his best to provide for his family and protect them from all the dangers of being a hated minority. Despite his best efforts their lives are reduced to rubble. There is unimaginable loss, humiliation, fear and misunderstanding even among those whom Sinan loves. (I found the portrayal of the missionaries especially sad, but true)
    • 4/5
      In the aftermath of an earthquake that virtually destroyed their village, two families' lives become increasingly and dangerously intertwined. Irem, the daughter of a hard-working, poor and proud father is attracted to Dylan, the disaffected son of an American rescue worker. This relationship challenges the values of her family and community and the author beautifully describes Irem's conflicted feelings as well as her family's reactions. The author Alen Drew lived and worked in Turkey in 1999 and arrived there just four days before a devastating earthquake, and much of this book's setting was inspired by that period in his life. I really enjoyed this book and found the characters well-drawn and completely believable. It's hard for us overfed and well-housed Americans to imagine how people live normally in this part of the world, let alone survive after this sort of disaster. Yet, not only do they survive, they maintain as much as possible their dignity and pride which, as we learn in the book, is not based on material goods or property. So not only was this a great read, but it gave me a lot to think about. It would be an excellent book club selection.
    • 3/5
      The story is based in Turkey and told through the eyes Sinnan, a father and a Kurd, a persecuted group of peoples in the Middle East. It's about misconceptions but the scale that it's on is so sad. Combined with the ways of life of a Kurd wrecks havoc on a family. I had a hard time connecting to the main character Sinnan. After thinking on it maybe I wasn't supposed to. His world view is so different from mine. It wasn't compelling enough. I could see what the author was trying to get across but it wasn't a good story as I think it could have been.
    • 5/5
      It has been nine years since the deadly Turkish earthquake of 1999, and yet the upheavals described in Gardens of Water echo throughout the news of today. Sinan, a Kurdish refugee shopkeeper working to establish a life in Turkey, fights to keep Turkey's liberal secular influences from affecting his family. But then the earthquake strikes, and the Turkish influences are joined with even more Western influences in the form of an American family who gives shelter and aid to Sinan and his wife and children.One of those children, his teenaged daughter Irem, has already felt the temptations of the West as personified by Dylan, the American family's son. Thrown together in a post-earthquake refugee camp, Dylan and Irem test boundaries for both of their families. Irem is forbidden to see Dylan, confined to the family tent. "She was stained with rumors because of a kiss. But it wasn't a stupid kiss; it was everything; it was what she wanted most, the only thing that made her happy. And the walls of the tent were crowding in and her mother wouldn't shut up and she thought she would explode."Questions of honor arise... the honor of women, the honor of Kurds, the honor of Muslims, the honor of good and decent individuals caught up in a chaos beyond their control. The clash of cultures leads to tragedy, though it is a tragedy accompanied by understanding.The resonance of current events comes with the subtle examination of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, and a more explicit description of the good intentions of American Christians and the road they pave. Sinan's father fell victim to Turkish oppression, but Sinan must acknowledge that his father provoked the oppressor. The American missionaries provide a rapid response to the disaster, bringing in desperately needed housing, food, and water, but their insistence on proselytizing and conversion brings about suspicion and even retaliation from both devout and militant Muslims in the camps. Author Alan Drew may not have set out to draw parallels, but he does draw all the difficulties faced by all of the characters with balance and care, never preaching, and understanding the conflicts he limns so well results in a deeper understanding of the conflicts we face now.The complexities of the issues are served well by Drew's talent for storytelling, and his command of language is masterful. Early on, Sinan "watched the streak of black water beyond the rooftops, and the city lights strewn around the bay like a necklace. The tea-black sky floated above him, punctured with only three stars, just three tiny pinpricks. At night in the village there were more stars than night sky, more world out there staring back than there were people in the whole of this city, probably more than there were people in all of the world's cities." The transitions between plot development and thought processes, between exterior event and interior monologues, are seamless, descriptions are lyrical yet never self-conscious or forced. If there were "little darlings," he either killed them all or wove them in so skillfully that the language is never a distraction from the story but rather lifts it up and carries it along. "Gardens of Water," with its masterful blending of fiction and historical fact, is one of the finest stories told in recent years.
    • 4/5
      This book was very well-written. The author provided a fair and even view point for each character - leading the reader to have sympathy for all involved whether they agreed or disagreed. It was a very different perspective on a multitude of relationships: father-daughter, mother-daughter, husband-wife, brother-sister, boyfriend-girlfriend, etc. Each relationship had its own level of balance and it was very interesting to see how the other relationships can throw off that balance.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book, it was a quick engaging read, and it gave me things to think about once I had finished it. The author made the characters all understandable - though some could have been developed in a more compelling way. It's always interesting once you read a book, and then the issues that it brings up seem to be all over the new -- issues regarding the PKK, the Kurds and much more are more noticeable now that I've finished it.
    • 5/5
      "Gardens of Water" provided a vehicle for seeing the gray area between differing views. Alan Drew brings a rare realism to the people and events of this novel. He looks at the edge between points of view and helps us see the sides from all directions. There are no absolutes about anything in this novel. Drew examines conflicts between filial duty and youth using the vehicle of religious beliefs without using fundamentalist extremes. There are refreshing and surprising perspectives driving the characters, and while in the depths of the book one is hopeful that history won't repeat itself. I highly recommend it for it's complex and layered honesty presented in a situation that fortunately few of us have had to endure.
    • 4/5
      A terrific debut novel about a conservative Kurdish family in transition in Turkey -- geographic transition, due first to military instability and then an earthquake; and cultural transition, initially sandwiched between Islamic fundamentalists and secularists, then among Western (American) Christians.Alan Drew develops sympathetic and true characters, and his writing style, sprinkling of foreign-language terms, and evocative settings immerse the reader in 1999 Turkey (on a par with Khaled Hosseini's style). Short chapters and alternating viewpoints (a father and his 15-year-old daughter) keep the story moving, though at a leisurely pace until the final 75 pages.This novel entertained and informed me, but it also did the best thing a book can do: it inspired me to learn more -- outside of the story -- by seeking and exploring additional sources on my own. Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      So many losses occur in this multi-layered book, beginning with the earthquake that crumbled buildings, society, and family connections in an Istanbul suburb before the millenium. The characterization of Sinan was faultless. I never thought I could feel the pain of a Muslim man, but his essence was convincingly conveyed despite its many facets. In his heart, he knew the Americans were a threat to his Kurdish way of life, but the obligation of his son's life overruled his doubts and caused him to let his guard down. His emotional conflicts were as distressing to me as was his male pride and poor treatment of his daughter.Most distressing, however, was the surreptitious religious imperialism. The prejudices and judgments that often accompany organized religion showed up in the "relief" camps. People who had lost everything now had their traditions and beliefs questioned, resulting in the ultimate degradation. With all this upheaval, it was no wonder that Irem (Sinan's 15-year-old daughter) was so confused by her first small taste of freedom and the attention of an equally confused American teen.What a spellbinding book. I was transported to a fascinating and complicated part of the world. My understanding of this bewildering culture was greatly enriched by the author's comments at the end. I highly recommend Alan Drew's well-researched and heartfelt first novel.
    • 4/5
      An excellent and complex novel about loss. A muslim family of Kurds in Turkey copes with an earthquake. Their fate is intricately connected with their American neighbors. The author examines in detail the muslim religion and how the Kurdish family copes with the changes in their life. The treatment of women and their subjugation under Islamic law and the Kurdish tradition is at the core of the family’s story.Extremely well written, the author takes some risks with his storytelling. I don’t want to reveal any plot-spoilers, but there are two narrators, and one of them undergoes a life-changing experience that is rare in a novel. But the author pulls it off with skill and sensitivity.The treatment of the religion of Islam is powerful and complex. The comfort it gives the sufferers of the earthquake is clearly described, yet I couldn’t help but be saddened by the barbaric and backwards aspects of the religion: the treatment of women, the honor killings, the resignation to fate and the lack of hope.Yet the novel is not anti-muslim, or anti-Turkish or Kurdish. It is well balanced and surprisingly realistic in it’s treatment of all the many religions and cultures present in Turkey.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I just finished this early review book and found it a captivating and moving read. The story surrounds a Kurdish family who has to live in refugee tents after their neighborhood is destroyed by an earthquake in the 90s. The book provides details of the family's interactions with each other and their interactions with the American workers trying to help them. It's hard trying not to give too much detail while writing a review on this one. I find it will read better without knowing where it is going. Overall, this book had me picking sides between a traditional, want the best for his family, Kurdish father and the possibility of young love winning out. The characters were very real and understandable, even when they did things that the reader may not agree with. The author did a wonderful job writing not only from a female point of view but also as a completely different nationality. You can tell he spent the couple of years he had in Turkey observing the people around him. The writing flowed nicely and kept me wanting more.This was a thought provoking work and will lead to interesting discussion. It's a nice ride that seems to speed to an end.
    • 4/5
      Gardens of Water--Alan DrewMy suggestion: Don’t bother with plot summaries or opinions, just read it for yourself and if you’re in a book group—make it a group read. Gardens of Water has a lot for everyone, and gives insight into the culture clash within Muslim families in a way that’s different. The Kurdish family (father, mother, 15-yr old daughter, 9-yr-old son) has been displaced to Turkey in the late 1990s. For the first time I feel some understanding of the Muslim male viewpoint, usually portrayed in a rather simplistic almost inscrutable, cold way. The father is old-fashioned strict but not a fundamentalist, a step toward middle-of-the road; I saw him as equivalent to first-generation European immigrants to the US: one foot in the old world and not quite sure how to raise their children, who are being exposed to values and situations they never faced. You can read plot summaries anywhere, so I’ll just concentrate on my reactions.This fine book doesn't take the easy road of pat answers; many of the characters experience true inner conflict on several issues and both sides of the several issues seem to get fair treatment. The best part for me was gaining some small understanding of the thought process and crescendo of emotions in people (American and Kurd) whose beliefs are so different from mine. It also provides some insight into the effects of the situation in Iraq during Hussein’s rule and the general area, but on a personal level. The writing is straightforward--none of the look at me I'm writing stuff--and the issues are quite accessible. In some ways, it’s a kinder, gentler Kite Runner or Thousand Splendid Suns. Some have compared elements of the story to Romeo and Juliet, which I would have found off-putting. For me, the story was much a culture clash within the families and internal to the various people. But because it’s told in an even-handed way, you get to explore your own feelings through each character. These folks have some tough issues to face and I found it quite moving. It’s the type of book you hate to have end because you won’t spend time with these people any more.Good for Random House for recognizing what’s likely to be an extremely popular AND worthwhile book.