Seven Houses

When Stories Are Harder to BearI like a book that will speak with me of spider webs, nightingales, an Adonis tree, even the blinding of a fox named Scheherazade. What really lives inside an egg of Amber? Where in the world is Smyrna? How does kismet devour the apple of a person's other plans for their life? For the last 10 days, afraid to have it end too soon, I have been lost in the so specific genius of Alev Lytle Croutier and her "Seven Houses." I slowed myself to a reader's crawl, all through these opening days of cold and Parisian rain. I've been basking in the vaporous warm hammam of its pages, and I did not want it to end. I wanted a world of a thousand nights and petals and the third eye of houses who may speak as witnesses to history, and tell me secrets I could never know, or invent. Maybe I wanted to escape this week's news reports of a world I no longer dare to understand. Of couse I did. And I wished to hear, with a little gentleness, of that region of the globe that I, or many, misapprehend. What may it have been like, once upon a time, in lands that border Iran and Iraq? What kind of women were growing up, there? I wanted to learn it through the pen of a wise and mysterious writer. So I found her.Croutier is a story teller extraordinaire, and more. And she is a most useful kind of a poet, and more. When language is exalted by story and story is exalted by language, "quel plaisir." Get the point? I loved it.Read "Seven Houses," and dream with its veils and its unveiling. Read it and discover a family you might not wish for your own, but one you want to pursue through its emergence - from a time when story counted for everything, to a time when the stories are harder and harder to bear. Margo Berdeshevsky/ Paris/ October, 2002

I closed "Seven houses" with regret, I wanted to follow Amber and her daughter back to America! I found the book poetical, poignant, (the last meeting with the grand and great-grand mother is superb) and sometimes very funny (de decaf plantation in particular). I learned how it feels to be a Rum (although I am not quite sure what it is, it seems to be the equivalent of being Jewish during the European middle-ages) and related beautifully to Amber, her hybridity, her wonder and sometimes impatience at the world.

As a Turkish woman, I have admired Mrs Croutier's writing for a very long time. Many years ago, she wrote the wonderful book, Harem, which introduced me for the first time to the history of my own ancestors, the women of Turkey's past. I am so happy she has started writing fiction. This new book, Seven Houses, is a real jewel. I also recommend Palace of Tears, her first novel that came out only recently. I highly recommend this book to all women interested in their own past.

I have never written a review on the Internet. But I was really surprised when I saw only one review (a very good one!) posted for this wonderful book. I found it to be very much in the same spirit as Isabelle Allende's House of the Spirits or Katherine Neville's book, The Eight, or Alice Walker's the Color Purple - and then I saw that all these writers had written comments about the book, themselves! So I would really recommend Seven Houses for anyone who likes any of the above. It's really unique.

You should leave at least one full weekend to read the new book by Alev Croutier, Seven Houses. In fact, you should spend the weekend very close to a Turkish restaurant. I found my mouth watering for more food, more time at the spa getting a steam bath, more time turning myself back into the beautiful, sexy [female] I USED to be! The women in this book are into being women at the same time as being interesting human beings. By the way--as a Latin American woman--is that a snapshot of Dolores del Rio on the front book cover? My Idol. Congratulations to the author for reintroducing women to women.