10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 'Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose' Vanity Fair 'Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative' Pandora Sykes 'Richly uplifting... truly beautiful writing' Nicola Sturgeon 'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...' For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women's legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . . 'Simply magnificent, a truly captivating work of immense power and beauty, on the essence of life and its end' Philippe Sands 'Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words' Colum McCann 'Elif Shafak's extraordinary 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a work of brutal beauty and consummate tenderness' Simon Schama 'A rich, sensual novel... This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.' Financial Times 'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi 'Haunting, moving, beautifully written. A masterpiece' Peter Frankopan 'Extraordinary' Guardian 'Life-affirming' Stylist *Elif Shafak's latest novel The Island of Missing Trees is available now*

I couldn't but the book down up till the point where 10 mins and 38 secs ended. After that I found it extremely hard to finish. It seemed like the story was dragging. The final scene did not make sense and gave the feeling like the author, in wanting to end on a good note but also wanting to finish the story, rushed the ending. I would still recommend it. It's a deeply emotional book and beautiful in a lot of places.

“...in the desert of life, the fool travels alone and the wise by caravan.”

As I'm reading about the title after the fact, evidently it's based on the scientific idea that a person's brain waves have been found to be active up to 10 minutes and 38 seconds past a person's death. The first part of this book embraces that idea as we get to know “Tequila” Leila, a Turkish brothel worker experiencing her last few minutes through flashbacks of her life. We learn about her family, her early years, and other formative events that led her to Istanbul and the brothel she worked at before her unfortunate end. We also learn about five very close friends she makes along the way, and also learn their backstories that led them to Leila. The second part of the book focuses on these five friends and how they come to terms(?) with the death of their friend.

This book was cruising for a solid four star review in the first part. I fell in love with the imagery presented to us by the author, and was incredibly invested in learning more about Leila and who she was. Her story was a sad one, but I loved how strong she seemed in the face of everything that happened to her. Then we hit the second part, and suddenly the tone of the book shifts abruptly to something more macabre humor as the friends undertake this crazy scheme to honor their dead friend. I appreciate the look at Leila's close friends and how they come to terms with her death, but I felt like the story that this introspection was hung on fell off the rails hard.

So, in summary, great start, weirdly absurd end that I felt was tonally off from the rest of the book.