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Summary
Summary
Set in the heart of the exotic Ottoman Empire during the first years of its chaotic decline, Michael David Lukas' elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel follows a gifted young girl who dares to charm a sultan--and change the course of history, for the empire and the world. An enthralling literary adventure, perfect for readers entranced by the mixture of historical fiction and magical realism in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, or Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Lukas' evocative tale of prophesy, intrigue, and courage unfolds with the subtlety of a Turkish mosaic and the powerful majesty of an epic for the ages.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A girl changes the course of the Ottoman empire in Lukas's middling debut. Eleonora Cohen-born in 1877 Romania, prophesied to alter history, and gifted with great intelligence-stows away at age eight to follow her father to Stamboul. Her first weeks there are a whirlwind of beautiful new dresses and cultural experiences, but the idyllic adventure takes a terrible twist after her father is killed in an accident and Eleonora is taken in by her father's wealthy and politically slippery friend. She proves to be a quick study, and once her tutor alerts the palace of Eleonora's immense intelligence, she finds herself in attendance at the sultan's court, commenting on a political standoff between the Ottoman empire, Russia, and Germany. As the sultan's interest in her grows, so, too, does her reputation and importance, though Eleonora is unsure if her new role is what she wants from life. The backdrop is nicely done, but Lukas can't quite get his characters to pop or the plot to click; indeed, the buildup of Eleonora's oracle-like powers culminates in a disappointing fizzle. It's well intentioned, but flatly executed. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The exotic sights and sounds of nineteenth-century Turkey spring vividly to life in Lukas' promising debut. Stowing away aboard a ship in order to follow her carpet-merchant father to Stamboul (Istanbul) eight-year-old Eleanora Cohen is initially enchanted by the vibrant new world she encounters. After her father's tragic death, Eleanora remains in the care of her father's friend and business associate, continuing her unorthodox education. A self-taught savant, she masters seven languages, displaying such remarkable gifts of comprehension and insight that her tutor brings her to the attention of Sultan Abdulhamid II. The sultan, caught in an increasingly tangled political quagmire with far-reaching consequences for the Ottoman Empire, begins relying on Eleanora for political and diplomatic advice. In addition to conducting a delightfully quirky magical mystery tour via an appealingly quirky heroine, Lukas also paints a bold portrait of an empire precariously poised on the chasm between an old and a new world.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE promising opening chapters of Michael David Lukas's first novel, "The Oracle of Stamboul," have many of the appealing features of a fairy tale. A girl of unusual gifts is born in fulfillment of a prophecy, and after her mother dies giving birth, she is raised by a loving but weak-willed father and an oppressive stepmother, while a mysterious flock of birds follows her wherever she goes. But the girl, Eleonora Cohen, is also a Jew born into a specific historical context - the Ottoman Empire in the late-19th century - and on the day of her birth in 1877, her hometown, the Romanian port of Constanta on the Black Sea, is sacked by the Russian cavalry. This juxtaposition of fable and brute history tells us right from the start that we're in the realm of magic realism, and the story's tension, or lack thereof, between magic and realism is an indication of both the ambition and the shortcomings of this ultimately frustrating novel. Eleonora's battle of wills with her stepmother, Ruxandra, provides the most emotionally engaging scenes in the book, as Eleonora's voracious appetite for literature and her phenomenal memory for what she reads run up against the embittered Ruxandra's hidebound ideas of a girl's lot in life. Finally, at the age of 8, and in the manner of plucky literary children everywhere, Eleonora escapes by stowing away in a trunk when her father, Yakob, a rug merchant, travels to Stamboul (modern-day Istanbul), revealing herself only when it's too late to send her back. Through a plot twist it wouldn't be fair to reveal, she winds up a permanent guest of Moncef Bey, her father's business partner in Stamboul, who not only allows her the run of his extensive library but introduces her to the splendors of the imperial capital. Meanwhile, Lukas introduces two other major characters: the Rev. James Muehler, an American academic and clandestine agent of the War Department; and the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdulhamid II (a historical figure), who, in the novel anyway, scarcely ever leaves his palace but governs from a suite of painstakingly described rooms, working through (and sometimes at cross purposes with) his grand vizier and his mother. Eventually, all these characters and plot lines are brought together, as Muehler is hired to be Eleonora's tutor and employs her talents to help break a code, and the sultan, learning of Eleonora's skill at languages and prodigious memory, summons her to the palace to advise him on his empire's conflict with the Russians. At last, Eleonora becomes the titular oracle of Stamboul. Unfortunately, once Eleonora and the story move to the city, the plot is slowly overwhelmed by the author's lengthy, albeit beautifully written, evocations of the ceiling in the sultan's audience chamber, or Eleonora's explorations of Moncef's spacious house, or scenic vistas of the Bosporus, or long lists of the books and authors she has read. On the realistic side of the story, Reverend Muehler's activities as a spy are only tepidly dramatized, and when he at last does something sneaky, the only consequence seems to be a stern letter from Moncef, telling him his services as a tutor are no longer required. At the same time, the crises that are supposed to preoccupy the sultan are presented only in summary, in his conversations with his grand vizier or his mother. The reader gets little visceral sense of what might actually be at stake in the world outside the palace gates. It's as if "Lawrence of Arabia" were set entirely in Prince Faisal's tent or General Allenby's office in Cairo. As for Eleonora herself, the portentousness of her introduction never really pays off. The prophecy of the opening chapter is reiterated near the end of the book, but the only truly magical thing about her throughout seems to be the flock of purple and white hoopoes that follows her around (an allusion, apparently, to the Sufi poet Farid al-Din Attar's allegorical work "The Conference of the Birds"). Apart from that, Eleonora comes across merely as an unusually precocious child, who answers the sultan's political and strategic challenges with stories from classical history. The text informs the reader that these answers dazzle the sultan, and make her an international sensation, but as far as this reader was concerned, putting current events in historical context doesn't make Eleonora an oracle, it just makes her Doris Kearns Goodwin. IT might have been different had there been some satiric edge to all this, some hint that the sultan and the tutor were grossly overestimating Eleonora's gifts, the way that everybody overinterprets the idiot pronouncements of the dim-witted gardener Chance in Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There." Instead the book too often plays like one of those earnest epic historical films of the 1950s and '60s in which the vast sets, countless extras and overbearing art direction finally overwhelm the actors and only the Miklos Rozsa music lets you know when something important is happening. By foregrounding the setting at the expense of his characters, Lukas unfortunately saps the story of most of its mystery, suspense and menace, and despite having enjoyed much of the lovely prose along the way, I read the book's underwhelming climax in a Peggy Lee frame of mind: "Is that all there is?" A book that promises from its opening pages both magic and realism is in serious trouble when it doesn't deliver nearly enough of either. James Hynes's most recent novel, "Next," will be released in paperback in March.
Library Journal Review
Eleonora Cohen's mother dies after giving birth to her in the Romanian city of Constant-a on the Black Sea in 1877. The child is raised by her doting father, Yakob, a rug merchant, and her cold and calculating aunt. By the time she is four, it is evident that Eleonora is a child prodigy; she reads and speaks several languages. When her father leaves for a trip to Stamboul (as Istanbul was then known in the Ottoman Empire), Eleonora, age eight, stows away on the ship. In Stamboul, Eleonora and her father visit her father's business partner, Turkish aristocrat Moncef Bey, and then tragedy strikes again. Meanwhile, Eleonora's extraordinary genius has come to the attention of the sultan himself, who invites her to his palace and seeks her advice. Soon rumors of the child's powers are flying around the city, and Eleonora has to make a very adult decision. VERDICT This first novel by a promising young writer is both vivid historical fiction and a haunting fable. It will appeal to a wide range of readers. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/10.]-Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.