SNOW

Snow by Orhan Pamuk has received an extraordinary amount of praise. So, I hesitate to add my meager opinion to the eloquent appraisals already out there. But, it's proven itself to be a cornerstone of the tower of books awaiting some passing comment, so here I meagerly go.

Snow is about Ka, a Turkish poet, looking to fall in love with a girl from his youth in a town he visited in his youth. He's spent the last years in Germany and comes under the guise of investigating a recent string of suicides. The small town gets snowed in, a coup is staged, he deals with fervent Islamists and fervent Secularists, he writes poems based on lightening inspirations, and he falls in love. A love, that we're told by our narrator from the start, doomed to failure.

I love situational reading, and this novel seemed tailored to my circumstances. Ka is snowed in; we get a couple feet of snow in a week. Ka is searching for something to aspire towards: love, religion, politics, art... but he's kept back by his own senses of skepticism that is split between doubt of the authenticity of those around him, and his own questioning of his own intentions. I can relate. Ka hasn't written poems in years. I've only written a few that I like recently. Ka starts writing furiously to describe his circumstances and those of the small town he's in. I so want to do that.

Ok, so it's not all as direct of correlations as the snow happened to be.

Orhan's narrative voice is splendid. It ebbs and flows, inviting the reader to become very involved with the action and the characters, then reigning back with an objective reminder that this is all a tragedy and then heightening our desire by announcing points of no return "the last time he would see her." It matches the story of Ka in this place, Kars, that continually tempts and rejects him. He is a guest, and the narration shows how tenuous that position is between involvement and exclusion... especially when the place is familiar and part of one's own history.

I was nervous about the flashes of inspiration that Ka received for his poetry and how each poem came out just right on the first draft. But Ka shows equal disbelief and begins to surrender himself to the process. He is called a Dervish several times. It is a good commentary on writing- that there needs to be that doubt and work ethic, but there also has to be a devotion to being open and receiving the flashes of
inspiration when they occur.

Orhan Pamuk keeps the uneasiness and excitement of writing, of not belonging, of falling in love, of politics, alive throughout the novel by never resting too long at any point. It keeps us wondering, wanting to identify the characters and place them archetypically in our appreciation of Turkey. And it keeps showing that we won't be able to succeed at that.