The Saint of Incipient Insanities

The characters are wry and humorous, the plot interweaving, the details very telling... One of the best fiction books I've read in a long time.

In this novel the author, Elif Shafak, writes a lovely multi-cultural, multi-character, multi-language ode to immigrants and to the American, and to the graduate school, experience. We meet her characters through their own private, and sometimes excruciating, nurosises. Bulemia, depression, neurotic behavior, alchoholism all feature in the novel, but help us see the human sides of her characters rather than define them. The book follows six main characters as they live their lives in Boston and try to define themselves through their inherited and new cultural biases. Funny at times and heartbreaking at others, the novel is a psychological journal into foreign lands. The most striking feature of the book is the use of language and for those who enjoy not just a good story, but the inventive use of rich and flowing language, this will be an enjoyable read. If you like this book, read also, "My Mother and the Turk" a book with a similar tone about a third generation Armenian-American family's remembered, and forgotten, past.

Another great novel from Elif Shafak, "The Saint of Incipient Insanities" is, at its core, about identity. Like Shafak's other work, it's the little things that makes it work so well--countless small details about cultural quirks, cuisines, and customs that make the characters come alive. For me, one high point came early in the book, when Shafak talks about the disorientation of seeing one's name stripped of diacrtics (sp?) and other pronunciation marks. It's a pretty obvious metaphor for the cultural homogenization that you'll find in a melting pot like the US, but it also says something on a deeper, more personal level. It's more of a character study than a plot-driven page-turner, but you'll probably find yourself unable to put the book down, and, like the characters, caught somewhere between East and West. The prose is often elegant, and always penetrating. I don't want to give away too many details and spoil the book, but I've got to stress how effective it is at presenting a range of complex, original characters trying to live in a difficult world. It's another great work from Shafak, a talented writer in any language.