A Strangeness in My Mind

I started reading this when Alice was a baby, but it was just too big to pick up and hold over the baby. So I started reading it again the other day and struggled to put it down. It is the story of a boza seller in Istanbul. It follows his life from the village to the city, his marriage, kids etc. Throughout it all it tracks the changes of the city, from the changes in types of housing, the education and aspiration of its inhabitants, change in commerce etc. I really enjoyed this book. After about the first 50 pages, I really got into it. I couldn't read it for long chunks of time which was annoying, but I struggled to put it down. I wouldn't say that I emotionally connected with the characters particularly but I recognised the city that was being described. The protagonist went to a Turkish primary school at roughly the time I went to one (maybe half a decade before but it was recognisable) and the changes that were happening in the city reflect what I saw during my childhood. The Istanbul of his adulthood were what I no longer recognised when I went back to visit in my late 20s. I wonder whether someone who doesn't have that connection with the city will get quite so much out of the book, but then again, I did care about the lives of the characters to some extent, but then again the city is most definitely a character in Orhan Pamuk's books.