Review by Booklist Review
A raindrop, part of water's "eternal cycle," connects lives across time and space in the latest imaginative, compassionate, and transporting novel of recovered history by globally acclaimed, frequently imperiled Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees, 2021). In Mesopotamia, on the River Tigris, cruel King Ashurbanipal is immensely proud of his library, especially the rare lapis lazuli tablet containing the Epic of Gilgamesh. In London in 1840, the raindrop that falls on Ashurbanipal is a snowflake when it lands on a baby born beside the polluted Thames and wryly named King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. A spectacularly magnetic character, Arthur possesses an extraordinary memory and a scholarly disposition and, against all odds, ends up at the British Museum, enthralled by Mesopotamian antiquities, including cuneiform tablets. Shafak glides between Victorian London and a Yazidi village on the River Tigris in Arthur's time and ours. In both eras, the Yazidis face hate and terror. In the present, hydrologist Zaleekhah has moved into a houseboat on the Thames, and once again the blue tablet resurfaces, linking her with Arthur and Narin, a young Yazidi girl captured by ISIS. In this captivating and provocative saga, Shafak presents a beautifully braided plot, entrancing settings, and soulful characters while dramatizing the complex power of stories, the wonders of water, and the terrible paradoxes of humankind.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The latest from Turkish British Booker Prize finalist Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees) starts with a single drop of rain in the ancient city of Nineveh on the banks of the River Tigris. The water connects three people from different eras whose lives are part of an endless hydrologic cycle. Born in 1840 London, Arthur overcomes poverty with his prodigious memory and a thirst for knowledge, eventually embarking on an archaeological quest in Nineveh. Narin is a 10-year-old in Turkey whose grandmother wants her to be baptized in the Tigris. They make their way to Nineveh just as the self-styled Islamic State asserts its power in the area. In London in 2018, hydrologist Zaleekah leaves her husband and moves onto a Thames houseboat where she contemplates suicide. Shafak interweaves the three stories while reflecting on critical human conflicts of the past and present. With a musical and compelling voice, narrator Olivia Vinall brings the three main characters to life, giving each a distinctive voice while jumping between perspectives and timeframes. Shafak narrates the afterword, discussing her meticulous research process in a clear voice. VERDICT A complex and moving novel, connecting past with present through stories, culture, and the magic of a single raindrop.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Three characters separated by geography and time are united by a single raindrop. In her latest novel, Shafak presents readers with an ambitious, century-spanning saga that revolves around three distinct characters hailing from different parts of the world and different time periods. There's Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has fled her marriage to live in a houseboat on the Thames in 2018; Narin, a young girl who lives along the Tigris in Turkey in 2014, where she is gradually going deaf; and Arthur, a brilliant young boy born into extreme poverty in mid-19th-century London. Zaleekhah, Narin, and Arthur are united by a literary device that often feels overly precious: a single raindrop that, through a repeated cycle of condensation, falling, freezing, and/or thawing, reappears throughout time to interact with or afflict each character. Shafak's attempts to personify the raindrop, which is described as "small and terrified…not dar[ing] to move," fall flat. As a whole, the novel is engaging, with a propulsive narrative and an appealing storytelling voice, but Shafak is overly reliant on certain stylistic mannerisms, such as long lists of descriptions or actions that, stacked one upon the other, quickly grow tiresome, as in this description of Victorian England: "Spent grain from breweries, pulp from paper mills, offal from slaughterhouses, shavings from tanneries, effluent from distilleries…and discharge from flush toilets…all empty into the Thames…." Worse is Shafak's tendency to overwrite and to pursue a self-consciously baroque narrative style (lots of betwixts and whilsts), which occasionally results in convoluted or overly intricate phrases. "Did not our readings of poetry leave unforgettable memories?" one character asks early on. Less, as it turns out, sometimes does count for more. An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
