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All in the family
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD
By Lisa Lutz Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.95 6 hours abridged, CD ISBN 9780743564342
The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak's sixth novel and the second written in English, was an instant bestseller in Turkey and got her indicted for "denigrating Turkishness," code for openly discussing the Armenian diaspora and the 1915 massacre, a taboo subject in Turkey. Despite the dark historical core and its lasting effects on generations of Armenians, this is an ebullient, richly textured family saga set for the most part in crowded, colorful Istanbul. Asya Kazanci, now 19, the "bastard" of the title, lives with her beautiful, miniskirted mother, three odd aunts, a grim grandmother and an Alzheimer-ridden great-grandmother in a truly eccentric household. Mustafa, her uncle and only male relative, was sent to Arizona before her birth and has never returned, nor communicated beyond random postcards. Enter Armanoush, also 19, Mustafa's Armenian/American stepdaughter who has come to Istanbul to seek her Armenian roots, add a healthy dose of wild coincidence, a soupçon of Turkish-style magical realism and the past begins to pierce the present, family secrets surface and the horrors of history take on personal reality. Laurel Merlington reads with verve and understanding, easily managing the sprinkles of Turkish and Armenian words.
By Elif Shafak Tantor Media, $39.99 11 hours unabridged, CD ISBN 9781400103973
Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, by renowned scholars Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King, lets us hear an extraordinary voice silenced for over 1,500 years, opening a fascinating window into the complex world of early Christianity.
By Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King Penguin Audio, $29.95 4 hours unabridged, CD ISBN 9780143141860
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Crime caper and chick-lit have met before with best-selling results—think Stephanie Plum and Bubbles Yablonsky. So, it's no surprise that that there was "big buzz" (a sound that makes publishers see big bucks) when The Spellman Files, the first of a series by Lisa Lutz, hit the scene. Private eye Isabel Spellman, the 28-year-old lead (yes, movie rights have been sold), with good looks and bad taste in boyfriends, works for her delightfully dysfunctional family-run sleuthing business and has done so since she could pick a lock and follow a suspect, not as a toddler but soon after. When Izzy, blinded by love for a straight-arrow dentist who finds her family way beyond weird, decides to quit the family firm, she agrees to take on one more case, an ice-cold, never-solved missing person problem that, in turn, may put her precocious younger sister, already deft in the art of detecting, in harm's way. Bright, fun (well, we're used to corpses as comedy), with the added dimension of real family dynamics played out in a zany context. Ari Graynor's narration does Izzy and Lisa proud.
'The past is anything but bygone'
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