Sailing Through Byzantium

by Maureen Freely

It's one minute to midnight on 27th October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis is entering its final countdown as the world prepares for nuclear winter.But in Istanbul's old bohemian quarter, a confederacy of free spirits has gathered around a baby grand to see the night out in style. The moment is captured in a legendary photograph.Behind them, dark ships pass along the Bosphorus. Some could be Soviet tankers, smuggling missiles to Cuba, but tonight no one is looking. All eyes are on Grace, the dark-haired singer. All that matters is her sublime voice, and her Stormy Weather.The girl crouched beneath the piano is the discordant note in the flamboyant scene. This is Mimi, Grace's nine-year old daughter. Until tonight she believed every word her mother uttered. Now she sees a byzantine web of lies. Who abandoned whom that night? And why did it change her life forever?On the 27th October 2012, Mimi has come back, haunted by these unanswered questions, to make her peace with the past.

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2013

Reviews

[Judy Abbott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okuması zevkli bir kitap. 1960'ların başında Istanbul'u hayal gücü pek geniş küçük bir Amerikalı kızın gözünden okuyoruz. Kitabı severek okudum ama kitabın amacı nedir anlamadım. Yani Istanbul iyi güzel de konu neydi? Küçük bir kızın nükleer savaş korkusu mu? Bilemedim.

[Janelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

not my thing, some moments were interesting, but overall complex and for a short book somehow too long

[Annette Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A delightful book that tells a version of the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of a child (possibly Maureen herself?). It is quaint, quirky, funny and very entertaining as the child hears and often misunderstands the talk of the adults around her as they discuss missiles, communists, spies and each other. The beginning and end felt a little muddled and contrived, seeming to serve simply as a story telling device, but the main part, narrated by the child is great fun.

[Anne Mc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big disappointment since I'd very much enjoyed the author's translations of Pamuk and have very fond memories of time w Strolling through Istanbul. The writing here is almost amateurish, and she seems mostly to appreciate Istanbul against a straw man rendering of the U.S. at the time (she disapproves of fluoridation, etc)

[Mehmet Dönmez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boğaziçinde geçtiği için büyük bir hevesle aldığım ve bayağı hayal kırıklığına uğradığım bir kitap maalesef. benim de kafam yerinde değil, kabul ama. Çevirinin kötü olduğuna ihtimal veremem yazar aslen çevirmen çünkü. Ama kitap boyunca ne karakterleri hafızamda tutabildim, ne olay örgüsünü anlayabildim

[Marit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sailing Through Byzantium is a book I picked up in preparation of a book fair and that I ended up enjoying a lot. It's the story of Mimi looking at a photo and looking back on her childhood spent in Istanbul during the Cuban missile crisis when they were all convinced the world might come to an end. On the photo taken at the end-of-the-world party there is a colorful group of people (that we we all get to meet throughout the book) admiring her mother Grace's singing. Mimi, under the piano, remembers that as the night she stopped believing everything her mother said.
The book is beautifully written and takes us back and forth between the vivid imagination of Mimi, who tries very hard to interpret the serious topics the adults discuss with her, and the larger historical framework of McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. Through her serious disposition and lack of friends her own age Mimi gets caught up in a dangerous game of observing the adults in a time when people were exposing their neighbors for the communists they were (or weren't).
Maureen Freely, having spent her childhood in Istanbul as well during this very same period, has apparently put some of her childhood questions and experiences in this book. Especially the juxtaposition of the danger of the time and childhood innocence is beautifully done and you wonder, along with Mimi, if that time was really as care free and good as she remembered.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must first be honest and declare an interest here in that I picked up this book, which is not my usual fare, because it was by one of my academic colleagues. In my role I do like to read a range of academic colleagues stuff, be it arts or science etc, where and when I have a reasonable chance of comprehending it.

However I was pleased that I did pick up the book as two elements of it did stand out for me. I loved the idea of the Cuban missile crisis seen not only through the eyes of a child, but also as seen through the very different geography of the oft forgotten Turkish aspect of that crisis.

The reference to Turkey takes me to the second element that intrigued me which was the city of Istanbul. This city keeps cropping up in my reading, last time in Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House, and Maureen Freely’s book has only added to my wish to see the city for real, and it also leads to read more of Maureen’s stuff. Unfortunately for me I appear to have started in very much the wrong order of her stories as I now find this book is the latest to feature some recurring characters of hers Oh well I better go backwards to Enlightenment now. That last sentence of mine sounds like I have started writing cod philosophical statements so I had better stop now.

[Venuskitten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sailing through Byzantium is set in 1962, at the time when the political situation between Russia and America was volatile. The narrator is nine/ten year old ex-patriate Mimi, living with her parents in Istanbul and who is caught up in a situation that she does not understand, and letting her overactive imagination run riot, with the encouragement of her mother. The colourful characters and lifestyle are recounted by Mimi from a time fifty years later.

The characters in the novel are eccentric rather than complex or engaging, and the plot is frustrating. I expected the novel to deal more directly with the Cuban missile crisis, and found Mimi's immature spy games irritating. The Cuban missile crisis is playing out in the background and we hear little about it, then it is resolved almost as an afterthought.

[Emrecan Dogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bu kitabi bitirmeye cok ugrastim, bir cok sans verdim, fakat ugrasamadim. Ya kitabin orjinali bir hayli gereksiz, ya da cevirisi yapilirken anlatim cok dagilmis ve bozulmus. Devam etmek icin iyi bir sebep bulamadim...

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few subplots never fleshed out, and many characters loosely developed, yet overall a solid read. The novel takes an interesting and hardly-seen East-meets-West perspective on the Cold War.