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The Four Humors: A Novel
This wry and visceral debut novel follows a young Turkish-American woman who, rather than grieving her father's untimely death, seeks treatment for a stubborn headache and grows obsessed with a centuries-old theory of medicine.
Twenty-year-old Sibel is fascinated by the human body. She's hoping to be a doctor and plans to spend her summer in Istanbul studying for the MCAT and visiting her father's grave. Instead, she finds herself self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine. Is an imbalance of blood, bile, choler, and phlegm the cause of her physical and emotional turmoil?
Also on Sibel's mind: her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey; her energetic but distraught younger sister; and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret.
Delving into her family's history, the narrative weaves through periods of political unrest in Turkey, from military coups to the Gezi Park protests. Told with pathos and humor, Sibel's search for strange and unusual cures is disrupted as she begins to see how she might heal herself through the care of others, including her own family and its long-fractured relationships.
Twenty-year-old Sibel is fascinated by the human body. She's hoping to be a doctor and plans to spend her summer in Istanbul studying for the MCAT and visiting her father's grave. Instead, she finds herself self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine. Is an imbalance of blood, bile, choler, and phlegm the cause of her physical and emotional turmoil?
Also on Sibel's mind: her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey; her energetic but distraught younger sister; and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret.
Delving into her family's history, the narrative weaves through periods of political unrest in Turkey, from military coups to the Gezi Park protests. Told with pathos and humor, Sibel's search for strange and unusual cures is disrupted as she begins to see how she might heal herself through the care of others, including her own family and its long-fractured relationships.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published November 9, 2021
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August 18, 2021
The four humors that pump through my body determine my character, temperament, mood. Blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler. The excess or lack of these bodily fluids designates how a person should be. I don’t know what choler means, and when I google it, the internet leads me to a link asking whether choler is a Scrabble word.
I thought that The Four Humors started with a really strong premise — a twenty-year-old Turkish-American woman makes her annual visit to Istanbul to visit family, this year with her blond American boyfriend in tow — and as this Sibel tries to apply the ancient “humor theory” of illness to her new, chronic headaches, there was a very interesting picture beginning to develop about this young woman who straddles two worlds, feeling more at home in the land (and medicine) of her ancestors. Everything between Sibel and Cooper was interesting and relatable and served to explore the culture divide, but about halfway through, Cooper takes a back seat and the story becomes about Sibel’s family secrets, with long stretches about the history of Turkish politics and student activism, and at that point the narrative lost the human touch for me. I understand that much of this story is based on debut author Mina Seçkin’s own experiences (born in Brooklyn, sent to Istanbul every summer to stay with the grandma who would eventually develop Parkinson’s, the mysterious year-long headache that Mina suffered), and the writing at the sentence level was interesting and strong, but the whole didn’t completely gel for me. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
They don’t say anything about the new fat on my hips, my arms, even my nose, which can bulb up with flesh, because this year the cause for weight is obvious.They’re afraid of me, and the shape my grief has taken. Blood, you’re lean and shaped as if made from stone. Phlegm, you’re fat. Because humors had to do with passions, temperament, and behavior, of course people had a lot of moralistic ideas about willpower and control. Moral health, which does not interest me.
Grief-stricken after the recent, sudden death of her father, Sibel is sent to Istanbul to study for her MCATs and supposedly to take care of her grandmother — but even with tremors and unsteady legs, Sibel’s grandma is happy to do all the caregiving while Sibel reads ancient texts for clues about the cause of her nagging headache. Her boyfriend, Cooper, is also intending to go to med school, and in between shifts working at the local eye hospital, he is slowly learning Turkish, winning grandma’s heart, and developing a sincere interest in the fate of the Syrian refugees he meets in the streets. As the pair walk along the Bosphorus together, shopping in the markets and eating with family in kebap restaurants, Seçkin paints a vivid picture of modern day Istanbul:
There is the Turkish word hüzün, which cannot be translated into English. Instead of meaning a simple sadness or suffering it denotes a collective, Istanbul-wide phenomenon that some call spiritual, some call nostalgic, but the one thing we know for sure is that the word exists because it is pridefully shared with others. The ideal is not to escape this suffering, but to carry this suffering. It is possessing the weight of the city as you wade through its past and present and, by doing so, you dissolve among many. I am pretty certain — as Ibn Sina was certain, too — that those with an excess of black bile like me are prone to feel this weight. Istanbul is a humor. The lubricant, oily and thick, black humor that begins to leak from my spleen. Istanbul is black bile, melancholy, only disguised as a city.
This was all very interesting to me until, as I said above, the storyline moves to the revelation of family secrets — which seem to come out of nowhere and which don’t really serve the premise — and I began to lose interest. I suppose there is some irony in Sibel and her grandma constantly watching melodramatic Russian soap operas, which Sibel’s mother hates, right up until their own family is revealed to be little more than a soap opera itself:
The women in my family love television. The Turkish shows are about family, culture, and inheritance. My mother, who likes American sci-fi and fantasy story lines, says that we, Turks, are simply not creative enough to produce television that strays from common, overused storylines populated with the same characters: a doting and controlling mother obsessed with her handsome son who falls in love with the wrong woman, all under the purview of an angry father.
The four humors angle was interesting (if maybe a little overused by Sibel) and it occurred to me afterwards that the four parts of this novel may feel disjointed because they are meant to each focus on a different humor (when Cooper is present at the beginning, the prevailing humor is blood [optimistic and sensual]; as Sibel’s headaches worsen and she can’t bring herself to visit her father’s grave, it feels like an excess of phlegm [passive and sensitive]; and as the story then shifts to the love lives of Sibel’s grandparents’ generation, it’s black bile [melancholy and irrational behaviour]; and finally to the youthful activism of Sibel’s parents’ generation, it is choler [excitable and prone to anger]). I can see how this works as a literary framework but it threw me off as an experience (and I could totally be reading something into the disjointedness that isn’t there).
I’m seeing now that I’m full of all four humors, and my excess — any excess is not dangerous or fatal.
Again, this is a very interesting view into the Turkish-American experience and if the storyline had stayed focussed on Sibel — instead of backloading in decades worth of history and politics at the end — I think I would have appreciated it even better. Still, there was much to like in this.
May 25, 2022
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The Four Humors is a rather milquetoast addition to the young-alienated-women subgenre that has become all the vogue in the last few years. Like most books that belong to this category, The Four Humors is centred around a 20-something woman leading a rather directionless existence. Sibel is a 26-year-old Turkish American woman who is a bit morbid, somewhat disaffected, and prone to self-sabotage. Similarly to other protagonists of this subgenre such as My Year Of Rest and Relaxation (here we the mc’s believes that a prolonged ‘sleep’ will ‘cure’ her of her ‘malaise’), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin (here the mc is obsessed with death), and Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey (here the mc is in reverence of florence nightingale and prescribes herself an outlandish cure in order to pass her exams), the narrator and protagonist of The Four Humors has a quirky obsession: she looks to the four humors theory of ancient medicine to make sense of her recurring and persistent headaches as well as the ‘malaises’ affecting those around her. Like the other disconnected women populating these disaster-women books, Sibel is grieving the death of one of her parents and uses her new obsession as a coping mechanism. Her remoteness, inwardness, and navel-gazing are yet other traits exhibited by these self-destructive women.
The majority of the narrative takes place in Istanbul during the summer. Sibel, alongside her inoffensive ‘all-American’ boyfriend, has gone to Istanbul to, allegedly, visit her father’s grave. Here she stays with her doting grandmother whose declining health is a source of further apprehension for Sibel who finds herself seeking comfort in the idea of blood, bile, choler, and phlegm as being the cause for human beings’ physical and emotional troubles. Meanwhile, she’s unable and or unwilling to visit her father’s grave, but repeatedly claims that she has to her loved ones.
Time and again she will go on about the theory of four humors but rather than making her into an interesting character, her obsession with this ancient physiology resulted in a lot of repetition. Sibel’s narration was boring, and her constant asides on bile, phlegm etc., further bogged down her story. Her narration lacked the wry social commentary and dark sense of humor that make reads such as Luster, You Exist Too Much, and Pizza Girl into such engaging reads.
Nothing much happens. Sibel avoids going to her father’s grave, she lies about it, her boyfriend seems to grow weary of how closed-off she’s become, and we are later introduced to her cousin and sister, both of which are beautiful or possess something Sibel feels she lacks. Her sister is anorexic and this whole subplot irritated me profoundly as I disliked the way her ED is depicted and treated by other characters. The latter half of the novel then is more about old family ‘secrets’. A portion of the book is dedicated to Sibel’s grandmother’s story, but this is related by Sibel whose voice failed to catch my attention.
This novel brought to mind The Idiot, but if I were to compare the two The Four Humors would not come out on top. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Mina Seckin has, in fact, read The Idiot, and both the tone of her story and her mumblecore dialogues seemed a bit too reminiscent of Elif Batuman’s novel.
The Four Humors is not a memorable addition to the alienated young women literary trend. If you’ve read any of the books from this list, well, you won’t be particularly blown away from The Four Humors. While I could have probably forgiven this book for its lack of originality, the narrative had a humorless quality to it that was harder to look past.
Ultimately, the novel’s only strength, or most appealing aspect, lies in the grandmother/granddaughter relationship. There were the occasional passages that stood out to me but for the most part I found the author's prose, and the content of her story, to be rather forgettable. The novel does have a strong sense of place and I liked the lazy dreamlike summer atmosphere permeating much of Sibel's story. So, if you are looking for a read set in Turkey or one that tries to articulate complex things such as grief, numbness, and heartbreak, well, The Four Humors might be the right read for you.
“THE FOUR HUMORS THAT PUMP THROUGH MY BODY DETERMINE my character, temperament, mood. Blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler. The excess or lack of these bodily fluids designates how a person should be.”
The Four Humors is a rather milquetoast addition to the young-alienated-women subgenre that has become all the vogue in the last few years. Like most books that belong to this category, The Four Humors is centred around a 20-something woman leading a rather directionless existence. Sibel is a 26-year-old Turkish American woman who is a bit morbid, somewhat disaffected, and prone to self-sabotage. Similarly to other protagonists of this subgenre such as My Year Of Rest and Relaxation (here we the mc’s believes that a prolonged ‘sleep’ will ‘cure’ her of her ‘malaise’), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin (here the mc is obsessed with death), and Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey (here the mc is in reverence of florence nightingale and prescribes herself an outlandish cure in order to pass her exams), the narrator and protagonist of The Four Humors has a quirky obsession: she looks to the four humors theory of ancient medicine to make sense of her recurring and persistent headaches as well as the ‘malaises’ affecting those around her. Like the other disconnected women populating these disaster-women books, Sibel is grieving the death of one of her parents and uses her new obsession as a coping mechanism. Her remoteness, inwardness, and navel-gazing are yet other traits exhibited by these self-destructive women.
The majority of the narrative takes place in Istanbul during the summer. Sibel, alongside her inoffensive ‘all-American’ boyfriend, has gone to Istanbul to, allegedly, visit her father’s grave. Here she stays with her doting grandmother whose declining health is a source of further apprehension for Sibel who finds herself seeking comfort in the idea of blood, bile, choler, and phlegm as being the cause for human beings’ physical and emotional troubles. Meanwhile, she’s unable and or unwilling to visit her father’s grave, but repeatedly claims that she has to her loved ones.
Time and again she will go on about the theory of four humors but rather than making her into an interesting character, her obsession with this ancient physiology resulted in a lot of repetition. Sibel’s narration was boring, and her constant asides on bile, phlegm etc., further bogged down her story. Her narration lacked the wry social commentary and dark sense of humor that make reads such as Luster, You Exist Too Much, and Pizza Girl into such engaging reads.
Nothing much happens. Sibel avoids going to her father’s grave, she lies about it, her boyfriend seems to grow weary of how closed-off she’s become, and we are later introduced to her cousin and sister, both of which are beautiful or possess something Sibel feels she lacks. Her sister is anorexic and this whole subplot irritated me profoundly as I disliked the way her ED is depicted and treated by other characters. The latter half of the novel then is more about old family ‘secrets’. A portion of the book is dedicated to Sibel’s grandmother’s story, but this is related by Sibel whose voice failed to catch my attention.
This novel brought to mind The Idiot, but if I were to compare the two The Four Humors would not come out on top. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Mina Seckin has, in fact, read The Idiot, and both the tone of her story and her mumblecore dialogues seemed a bit too reminiscent of Elif Batuman’s novel.
The Four Humors is not a memorable addition to the alienated young women literary trend. If you’ve read any of the books from this list, well, you won’t be particularly blown away from The Four Humors. While I could have probably forgiven this book for its lack of originality, the narrative had a humorless quality to it that was harder to look past.
Ultimately, the novel’s only strength, or most appealing aspect, lies in the grandmother/granddaughter relationship. There were the occasional passages that stood out to me but for the most part I found the author's prose, and the content of her story, to be rather forgettable. The novel does have a strong sense of place and I liked the lazy dreamlike summer atmosphere permeating much of Sibel's story. So, if you are looking for a read set in Turkey or one that tries to articulate complex things such as grief, numbness, and heartbreak, well, The Four Humors might be the right read for you.
February 24, 2022
3.5⭐️ rounded up. The narrator in this book is another of those aimless young women who appear in a lot of books these days. She is dealing with the grief and guilt over her father’s death and goes to her parents’ home country of Turkey to take care of her grandmother. There she learns a lot about her family’s fraught history and Turkish politics. Not much happens and the four humors of the title don’t really play into the story much. There is a richness to the writing and the narrator is a bit more self-aware than what we find in other books of this genre.
December 31, 2021
Reminiscent of MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, but warmer, as befits the setting of Istanbul, which is beautifully captured here (some shades of THE IDIOT too).
February 12, 2022
healing! may your eyes be clear, your complexion healthy, may you live to see everything you want
December 4, 2021
I think the only flaw of this book to me is how all these grand, emotional moments are tucked as a fancy last sentence of a paragraph. It happens a lot. And some details could've been expanded upon? Like what is Deniz to Sibel, really? (And my serious minor pet peeve is, I wish we had read the relative terms in Turkish! Like dayı just isn't the same as uncle!!)
But other than that... the discussion of generational trauma and mother-daughter relationships (all the relationships between women really!!!), the history of Turkey and the extremely difficult feeling of being diaspora - feeling kin for a country that isn't yours, that will never be home to you, but so much of belonging in the PEOPLE - those spoke to me so much and really verbalized some of the most complicated feelings I store in me. I think Seçkin did an amazing job there. Such a good book.
But other than that... the discussion of generational trauma and mother-daughter relationships (all the relationships between women really!!!), the history of Turkey and the extremely difficult feeling of being diaspora - feeling kin for a country that isn't yours, that will never be home to you, but so much of belonging in the PEOPLE - those spoke to me so much and really verbalized some of the most complicated feelings I store in me. I think Seçkin did an amazing job there. Such a good book.
December 24, 2021
This is a deeply introspective novel about belonging, connection, and the terrible fear of being known. A search for balance has the characters reaching out across family lines and cultures, in a quest to find the equilibrium of self.
June 1, 2025
Far and away my favourite read of the year so far. The sense of place, the melancholy and hope all bundled up together, the politics (deeply critical of US foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonialism, which made the book a relaxing read amidst the Turkish history I knew very little about), the diaspora as both being and wanting. I loved the prose, the complicated mess of family relationships, and Sibel's finding solace and meaning in the four humours theory during her tide of grief. Perfect.
December 9, 2021
I adored this book from start to finish. Without a doubt one of my favorite novels of 2021. The narrative voice is funny, flinty, and unforgettable. This book will be with me for a long time.
June 20, 2024
i saw mina seçkin at columbia speaking at a panel with elif batuman hosted by bruce robbins and i remember bruce robbins compared both of their works to orhan pamuk and elif batuman was like actually our work has nothing to do with politics or orhan pamuk and i thought that was really funny because it’s so telling of how flawed american literary criticism is sometimes in its compulsion to group together any writers who share a nationality, as if these three turkish writers all write in the same artificial genre of “Turkish Literature,” because any work that features a non-Western culture cannot possibly be about anything else other than an Ethnic Novel of sorts. Like for example if Sally Rooney were Turkish then Normal People would not be a book about Normal People but rather Turkish People, you get what i’m saying? and it’s not like Irish politics or anything Ireland aren’t present in her books, it’s just that we are able to read the book for what it is and correctly regard the Ireland of it all as context/background.
at this point i am aware that i have said nothing about the book. well, i liked it very much. the reviews kind of surprised me, a lot of people saying the family history was “too much,” or that they got bored halfway through — did we read the same book?? i personally couldn’t put it down. the reviews got me thinking about the curse of non-white/Western writing and how it will either be “too much” (because why should you care about Turkish family histories? Turkish anything? really, why?) or not enough (how dare you not let me engage in my orientalist indulgence of your silly little culture, how dare you not make it accessible to me, etc.). obviously the themes of Turkish-Americanness and generational trauma / national history are heavy in the book, and i will inevitably enjoy it more than the average reader because Sibel will mention an obscure Turkish expression or a pink building in a certain district of Istanbul and I will know exactly what it is. but the parts that were most interesting to me were the grandmothers’ histories, which are, yes, very much so influenced by Turkish history, but are really about female suffering, which is universal, but i feel like when a text is “of a different culture” some people will immediately accept it as unrelatable and as a very distant spectacle. which, if you don’t have a particular interest for that culture, it will be a boring read. for example, Sibel mentions that she was born on the same day as a terror attack, and her mother thinks that she will be cursed because of it. and instead of contemplating its metaphorical implications, a western reader might stop at Hmm, Turkish people are superstitious. Cool.
obviously i’m going to get defensive about this book. im just thinking about how i was in fiction workshop and some student (also international btw) presented my piece to the class as “This is a very… Turkish story…” and, like, true, but is that all you’ve got???
the quality of “foreign” is unfortunately the raw garlic of modern fiction these days. let it be salt, or even some other Spice, maybe cumin? that would certainly still fit some of yalls schema of The International…
at this point i am aware that i have said nothing about the book. well, i liked it very much. the reviews kind of surprised me, a lot of people saying the family history was “too much,” or that they got bored halfway through — did we read the same book?? i personally couldn’t put it down. the reviews got me thinking about the curse of non-white/Western writing and how it will either be “too much” (because why should you care about Turkish family histories? Turkish anything? really, why?) or not enough (how dare you not let me engage in my orientalist indulgence of your silly little culture, how dare you not make it accessible to me, etc.). obviously the themes of Turkish-Americanness and generational trauma / national history are heavy in the book, and i will inevitably enjoy it more than the average reader because Sibel will mention an obscure Turkish expression or a pink building in a certain district of Istanbul and I will know exactly what it is. but the parts that were most interesting to me were the grandmothers’ histories, which are, yes, very much so influenced by Turkish history, but are really about female suffering, which is universal, but i feel like when a text is “of a different culture” some people will immediately accept it as unrelatable and as a very distant spectacle. which, if you don’t have a particular interest for that culture, it will be a boring read. for example, Sibel mentions that she was born on the same day as a terror attack, and her mother thinks that she will be cursed because of it. and instead of contemplating its metaphorical implications, a western reader might stop at Hmm, Turkish people are superstitious. Cool.
obviously i’m going to get defensive about this book. im just thinking about how i was in fiction workshop and some student (also international btw) presented my piece to the class as “This is a very… Turkish story…” and, like, true, but is that all you’ve got???
the quality of “foreign” is unfortunately the raw garlic of modern fiction these days. let it be salt, or even some other Spice, maybe cumin? that would certainly still fit some of yalls schema of The International…
November 8, 2021
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𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚’𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒏.
Sibel is an American Turkish twenty-year-old who has grown up influenced by both cultures, splitting her time between the two countries. For the summer, she and her ‘blond’ American boyfriend Cooper are spending time in Turkey so that she can help care for her grandmother who has Parkinson’s and visit her Baba’s (father’s) grave. Cooper is renting a place near an eye hospital where he is working, while she stays with her grandmother’s place. They have promised to Sibel’s mother they would adhere by Turkey’s strict rules, respecting their culture. Sibel is supposed to be working at a hospital too but is plagued by headaches, ones that she is trying to diagnosis, researching the four humors. People once believed the four humors, proposed by Hippocrates, affected health and related to personality types and moods, made up of four substances (humors) black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. These were said to be the basis of ancient medicine. The theory is an imbalance caused no end of disorders and illnesses, think bloodletting of bygone days. Despite the fascination with the topic, it isn’t the answer to what is causing her own headaches but what is the cause? Cure? Cooper has happily thrown himself into learning about her culture, wanting to understand more beyond what the western news airs and being accepted by her family.
Despite being there to care for her grandmother, it is she who insists Sybil go to the hospital, tending to her grandchild’s needs. She also gently prods her to visit her father’s grave, but something is holding her back. As for Cooper, the language and cultural barrier doesn’t stand in the way of her grandmother’s delight in his presence nor stop her from communicating in other ways. His own grandmother, coincidentally, had once taught at a boarding school on the Syrian border, lending him a little bit of history to explore. Sibil herself, when she is with her cousin’s friends, isn’t Turkish enough, doesn’t have a full grasp on their history and when in America her otherness is evident, people always asking where she is from. Even illness in its many forms is different culturally. Religion too is a wall, her own parents didn’t raise her Muslim, dangerous after 9/11. Where will she be buried when she is dead? How do you traverse the shifting sands of self, when made up of two cultures that conflict?
Are the headaches psychosomatic? That she should be studying for her MCAT, focused on finishing her degree isn’t lost on her. But everything is off. Cooper loves Turkey, wants to stay, what better place can you learn about medicine? But she is consumed with not wanting to remember her father, feeling pain, his disappointment in her. She is angry with Cooper, wondering how he could love her. Everything is heavy for her, more perplexing than her headaches. In the background is the politics and the divisions it causes. How the violence and instability has touched her own family members. She is filled with grief she isn’t confronting. Her body is a challenge she isn’t understanding, but she is trying. That is what the four humors is really about. Where is her soul? Are we our body? She has closed up, and all of the things we bury scream to be let out. She has been carrying a shame in her heart, and it is showing itself in her body. Her sister Alara is another worry, one she isn’t truly facing. Cooper and Sibel start to fall apart and the story takes a turn into her family’s past.
Her grandmother has secrets, a heavy shame of her own shame that shaped Sibel’s father’s life. Refika enters the tale, and I was actually wrapped up in the deception of the past. It is her time spent at Refika’s side that Sibil learns different versions of her family story while also various forms of healing through Refika’s companion, Albina. There is a lot going on in this story, but for me it wasn’t hard to keep up. Cooper has more importance as we draw to a conclusion too. What Sibil really is trying to heal isn’t physical. It’s more she wants to understand what others want, think, feel. To reach out and help them. But she has to cure herself.
I felt a disconnect toward Sibel but it felt fitting, as she is disconnected herself. It’s like the soap operas she watches with her grandmother, hiding from her studies and her guilt. It’s an interesting debut, I can’t say I have ever read a book using the four humors as a guide. I’m glad I kept with it, the novel felt more like a memoir than fiction. It ended up being quite sad in some parts. I admit to really liking Refika’s character and one thing that most people can understand, despite their geography, are the confusions of family dynamics.
Publication Date: November 9, 2021
Catapult
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚’𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒏.
Sibel is an American Turkish twenty-year-old who has grown up influenced by both cultures, splitting her time between the two countries. For the summer, she and her ‘blond’ American boyfriend Cooper are spending time in Turkey so that she can help care for her grandmother who has Parkinson’s and visit her Baba’s (father’s) grave. Cooper is renting a place near an eye hospital where he is working, while she stays with her grandmother’s place. They have promised to Sibel’s mother they would adhere by Turkey’s strict rules, respecting their culture. Sibel is supposed to be working at a hospital too but is plagued by headaches, ones that she is trying to diagnosis, researching the four humors. People once believed the four humors, proposed by Hippocrates, affected health and related to personality types and moods, made up of four substances (humors) black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. These were said to be the basis of ancient medicine. The theory is an imbalance caused no end of disorders and illnesses, think bloodletting of bygone days. Despite the fascination with the topic, it isn’t the answer to what is causing her own headaches but what is the cause? Cure? Cooper has happily thrown himself into learning about her culture, wanting to understand more beyond what the western news airs and being accepted by her family.
Despite being there to care for her grandmother, it is she who insists Sybil go to the hospital, tending to her grandchild’s needs. She also gently prods her to visit her father’s grave, but something is holding her back. As for Cooper, the language and cultural barrier doesn’t stand in the way of her grandmother’s delight in his presence nor stop her from communicating in other ways. His own grandmother, coincidentally, had once taught at a boarding school on the Syrian border, lending him a little bit of history to explore. Sibil herself, when she is with her cousin’s friends, isn’t Turkish enough, doesn’t have a full grasp on their history and when in America her otherness is evident, people always asking where she is from. Even illness in its many forms is different culturally. Religion too is a wall, her own parents didn’t raise her Muslim, dangerous after 9/11. Where will she be buried when she is dead? How do you traverse the shifting sands of self, when made up of two cultures that conflict?
Are the headaches psychosomatic? That she should be studying for her MCAT, focused on finishing her degree isn’t lost on her. But everything is off. Cooper loves Turkey, wants to stay, what better place can you learn about medicine? But she is consumed with not wanting to remember her father, feeling pain, his disappointment in her. She is angry with Cooper, wondering how he could love her. Everything is heavy for her, more perplexing than her headaches. In the background is the politics and the divisions it causes. How the violence and instability has touched her own family members. She is filled with grief she isn’t confronting. Her body is a challenge she isn’t understanding, but she is trying. That is what the four humors is really about. Where is her soul? Are we our body? She has closed up, and all of the things we bury scream to be let out. She has been carrying a shame in her heart, and it is showing itself in her body. Her sister Alara is another worry, one she isn’t truly facing. Cooper and Sibel start to fall apart and the story takes a turn into her family’s past.
Her grandmother has secrets, a heavy shame of her own shame that shaped Sibel’s father’s life. Refika enters the tale, and I was actually wrapped up in the deception of the past. It is her time spent at Refika’s side that Sibil learns different versions of her family story while also various forms of healing through Refika’s companion, Albina. There is a lot going on in this story, but for me it wasn’t hard to keep up. Cooper has more importance as we draw to a conclusion too. What Sibil really is trying to heal isn’t physical. It’s more she wants to understand what others want, think, feel. To reach out and help them. But she has to cure herself.
I felt a disconnect toward Sibel but it felt fitting, as she is disconnected herself. It’s like the soap operas she watches with her grandmother, hiding from her studies and her guilt. It’s an interesting debut, I can’t say I have ever read a book using the four humors as a guide. I’m glad I kept with it, the novel felt more like a memoir than fiction. It ended up being quite sad in some parts. I admit to really liking Refika’s character and one thing that most people can understand, despite their geography, are the confusions of family dynamics.
Publication Date: November 9, 2021
Catapult
March 23, 2023
This writing style (of the Sally Rooney variety) is very much not to my taste. But, I loved the Istanbul setting a lot and there were certain other things I did enjoy.
February 23, 2022
The Four Humors follows the protagonist, Sibel, who is in Turkey for the summer to care for her grandmother. She suffers from chronic headaches while there and, in attempts to self-diagnose, finds herself engrossed in the ancient Greek idea of the four humors—that one's well-being is maintained by a balance of blood, bile, phlegm, and choler. Sibel's father recently died and she uses her fascination with the four humors as a way to avoid confronting the grief and guilt she feels.
While she's so internally focused, though, she connects with her family's past, learning long-hidden secrets. In coming to terms with her father's death, Sibel also recognizes her limitations in truly seeing those around her.
While she's so internally focused, though, she connects with her family's past, learning long-hidden secrets. In coming to terms with her father's death, Sibel also recognizes her limitations in truly seeing those around her.
January 2, 2022
Beautiful, immersive, sensuous, delicious. I savored this book!
Highly recommend reading some of the brilliant interviews with the author, like this one: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/min...
Highly recommend reading some of the brilliant interviews with the author, like this one: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/min...
November 11, 2022
I loved this book. So beautiful, so moving. Can’t wait to see what she puts out next, definitely recommend!
March 15, 2023
My head has ached since May, more or less the same amount of time I’ve been in Istanbul. My brain is an earthquake or an ocean. Whichever I am more likely to survive.
Twenty year old Sibel travels from Brooklyn to Istanbul for the summer, where she's supposed to be studying for the MCAT and grieving for the sudden death of her father, but instead becomes obsessed with using ancient medicinal philosophy to cure her chronic headaches.
I loved the beginnings of this, where Sibel and her American Golden-Retriever-energy boyfriend Cooper wander the markets of Istanbul, or when Sibel hides out in her ailing grandmother's stuffy apartment watching Russian soap operas.
And some of the prose I just loved and had to stop to admire: "Silly, I thought, that I could take his heart into my chest cavity and let his beat in place of mine.", but things really fizzled out for me around the halfway mark.
It becomes less about Sibel and her headaches and grief and more about long hidden family secrets slowly becoming unraveled. Which sounds interesting, but emphasis on slowly. There was a lot of information on Turkish history and politics, which again was interesting, but felt far removed from the story.
You might enjoy this if you're a fan of The Idiot or My Year of Rest and Relaxation and have a bit more patience than me.
July 4, 2022
This was, on the surface, one of those tales of feckless introspective 20-somethings that's not quite my thing, but I liked this one—there's a bit more going on than just that. The book follows Sibel, a Turkish American 20-year-old premed student (sort of), in Turkey for a summer with her boyfriend to ostensibly help out her grandmother, who's in the early stages of Parkinson's disease.
There's a lot of family drama in addition to her own, which I think makes it interesting. It's about matriarchy more than anything else—Sibel, her grandmother, mother, and sister—and the most important male character is Sibel's recently deceased father, whose death doesn't leave so much of an absence in her life as it leaves a lot of questions: family secrets, inheritance (personality-wise, not stuff), and how she should be in the world. All of which looks like it's going to be too much for her, that she's too diffuse and neurasthenic to grapple with them. But in the end she rallies, which is a good payoff for having stuck with her.
There's a lot of family drama in addition to her own, which I think makes it interesting. It's about matriarchy more than anything else—Sibel, her grandmother, mother, and sister—and the most important male character is Sibel's recently deceased father, whose death doesn't leave so much of an absence in her life as it leaves a lot of questions: family secrets, inheritance (personality-wise, not stuff), and how she should be in the world. All of which looks like it's going to be too much for her, that she's too diffuse and neurasthenic to grapple with them. But in the end she rallies, which is a good payoff for having stuck with her.
July 8, 2022
2.5 ⭐️
I started this book with v high expectations (gorgeous cover, intriguing premise and set in Istanbul!) and while I enjoyed parts of it, the story and writing fell a little flat for me. The narrator, Sibel, is one of those disillusioned/semi aimless 20-something y/o women who appear in lots of contemporary fiction rn (think Elif Batuman or Otessa Moshfegh) and who, generally, i find pretty entertaining and relatable. I liked Sibel’s self-awareness and loved that the novel was set in Istanbul and had lush, rich detail about the city, Turkish politics and the intertwining story of Sibel’s family and the country’s history. Despite this, I got pretty bored and slightly confused about the lengthy family history/ drama saga and Sibel’s slightly bizarre burgeoning interest in alternative medicine. I was ready to be done around the halfway mark and finished it just to do so. Overall, loved reading about Turkey and for some of the relatable human relationships but wouldn’t necessarily recommend.
I started this book with v high expectations (gorgeous cover, intriguing premise and set in Istanbul!) and while I enjoyed parts of it, the story and writing fell a little flat for me. The narrator, Sibel, is one of those disillusioned/semi aimless 20-something y/o women who appear in lots of contemporary fiction rn (think Elif Batuman or Otessa Moshfegh) and who, generally, i find pretty entertaining and relatable. I liked Sibel’s self-awareness and loved that the novel was set in Istanbul and had lush, rich detail about the city, Turkish politics and the intertwining story of Sibel’s family and the country’s history. Despite this, I got pretty bored and slightly confused about the lengthy family history/ drama saga and Sibel’s slightly bizarre burgeoning interest in alternative medicine. I was ready to be done around the halfway mark and finished it just to do so. Overall, loved reading about Turkey and for some of the relatable human relationships but wouldn’t necessarily recommend.
January 16, 2022
“Really, I don’t do anything, but I like knowing that I can do anything”
“You know, what’s happening in your head is not what’s happening in real life”
“ I felt my first calm in weeks. I realized that if I did blow up, I wouldn’t have to be buried like Baba”
SIBEL, SHE’S JUST LIKE ME!
Loved loved loved 5/5! Tried to write a review but I kept spoiling it and I don’t want to do that. I want everyone go read this and immediately fall in love with the language, the characters, and Turkey. This book is actually very funny even though it focuses on many really serious topics, which is why I guess it’s easy to understand and easy to digest. I didn’t feel like the author was trying to lecture me about anything, so I ended up learning a lot.
I really wished someone had suggested therapy to all the members of this family at some point, especially alara and Sibel but I digress.
“You know, what’s happening in your head is not what’s happening in real life”
“ I felt my first calm in weeks. I realized that if I did blow up, I wouldn’t have to be buried like Baba”
SIBEL, SHE’S JUST LIKE ME!
Loved loved loved 5/5! Tried to write a review but I kept spoiling it and I don’t want to do that. I want everyone go read this and immediately fall in love with the language, the characters, and Turkey. This book is actually very funny even though it focuses on many really serious topics, which is why I guess it’s easy to understand and easy to digest. I didn’t feel like the author was trying to lecture me about anything, so I ended up learning a lot.
I really wished someone had suggested therapy to all the members of this family at some point, especially alara and Sibel but I digress.
November 22, 2021
A 20-year old Turkish-American woman grieving the death of her father spends the summer in Istanbul (vividly captured), with her American boyfriend in tow, to take care of her ailing grandmother. She becomes fixated on ancient medicine in the course of trying to cure her chronic headaches.
The book spends quite a bit of time unraveling her family's old secrets from multiple perspectives, which are fascinating. A very interesting read.
The book spends quite a bit of time unraveling her family's old secrets from multiple perspectives, which are fascinating. A very interesting read.
February 3, 2022
A novel filled with emotion. I liked the plot but found some parts to be a bit disjointed and hard to follow. My brain also had a hard time wrapping itself around the fact that there were no quotation marks for dialogue. That being said, the story was interesting and I really felt for the characters. I also learned a bit about Turkey.
January 7, 2023
I found the narrator annoying at times, and the final family history twist was a bit too much, but Seçkin vividly captures the experience of being a second-generation emigrant returning to the “homeland.”
Read
December 24, 2021Here’s my review of this book for NPR Books. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/24/106670...
December 26, 2021
An enthralling novel that instantly transports the reader into Turkey. The author’s writing is so rich in its sensory experiences that I could nearly taste the kebap and the flaky phillo pastries. I blazed through this in two sittings because I was so rapt in the stories. I felt like I was there, with Sibel, and often wanted to reach through the pages to ask follow up questions to the vague, mystical answers the various matriarchs offered to Sibel.
April 27, 2022
3.5 rounded up! It would be a 4 based on my enjoyment because I enjoyed the prose and the experience, but it’s a 3.5 from a bigger picture perspective. Started stronger than it ended.
January 18, 2023
I really liked this book! I’ve been reading my way through Istanbul and this is just exactly what I want from a book. It’s about love and friendship and place and family and what we carry. All that and it was people my own age and some good young adult strife. I will say some loose ends were never tied up in a way that was more confusing than poetic/intentional. But yeah this is one of those books that hits like coffee in the sun on a morning where you have time: simple, good, nothing extravagant but boy does it hit the spot. Also who will please go to Istanbul with me??
September 13, 2023
Staggeringly good. I couldn’t put it down. And Sibel will stay with me for a long time.
December 16, 2021
About 100 pages in, I realized with amazed admiration just what author Mina Seckin had undertaken: She was trying to get her readers to care about a young, middle-class woman whose guilt over her father’s death has made her basically incapable of doing anything.
She largely succeeds, thanks to her unrelentingly honest excavations into the woman's mind and sharply beautiful language. I wish, however, that she hadn’t taken quite so long to hit home. For too much of those first pages, the protagonist, Sibel, a Turkish-American college student from New York City, is annoyingly self-indulgent and obsessed with the ancient concept of the body’s four humors (phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood).
Sibel and her American boyfriend Cooper are spending the summer of 2014 in Istanbul supposedly taking care of Sibel’s grandmother, who has Parkinson’s disease. Of course, it’s Sibel who really needs care. The previous winter, she had watched, frozen in shock, as her father collapsed from a heart attack “in the kitchen while boiling water for tea” (as she frequently repeats, as if flagellating herself verbally). Now, although she’d promised to visit her father’s grave and study for the medical school entrance exam, Sibel can barely do more than watch soap operas on TV with her grandmother, stuff herself with food, and sneak out for cigarettes. She is also suffering from mysterious, severe headaches.
The book interweaves these personal narratives with a chilling sense of the political tension seeping through Turkey, one year after massive protests against the government’s attempt to turn the popular Gezi Park in Istanbul into a military museum and shopping mall.
(Adapted from my review in The New York Journal of Books,
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book... )
She largely succeeds, thanks to her unrelentingly honest excavations into the woman's mind and sharply beautiful language. I wish, however, that she hadn’t taken quite so long to hit home. For too much of those first pages, the protagonist, Sibel, a Turkish-American college student from New York City, is annoyingly self-indulgent and obsessed with the ancient concept of the body’s four humors (phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood).
Sibel and her American boyfriend Cooper are spending the summer of 2014 in Istanbul supposedly taking care of Sibel’s grandmother, who has Parkinson’s disease. Of course, it’s Sibel who really needs care. The previous winter, she had watched, frozen in shock, as her father collapsed from a heart attack “in the kitchen while boiling water for tea” (as she frequently repeats, as if flagellating herself verbally). Now, although she’d promised to visit her father’s grave and study for the medical school entrance exam, Sibel can barely do more than watch soap operas on TV with her grandmother, stuff herself with food, and sneak out for cigarettes. She is also suffering from mysterious, severe headaches.
The book interweaves these personal narratives with a chilling sense of the political tension seeping through Turkey, one year after massive protests against the government’s attempt to turn the popular Gezi Park in Istanbul into a military museum and shopping mall.
(Adapted from my review in The New York Journal of Books,
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book... )
September 27, 2022
book felt too slow for me, did not finish at 80 pages
there were also a few subtle anti-semitic comments in the book
there were also a few subtle anti-semitic comments in the book
January 16, 2022
I adored this book. It was so warm and absolutely hilarious in such a beautiful, subtle way.
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