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A review by lectoribenevolo
The King of Taksim Square by Mark David Wyers, Emrah Serbes
3.0
This is a strange book.
Our story follows the exploits of Çaglar Iyice, a seventeen-year-old in Turkey at the time of the Taksim Square uprising in 2012. He narrates his efforts to make his nine-year-old sister, Çigdem, a Michael Jackson tribute artist, famous, first by trying to get her on an Idol-type television talent competition, then by trying to make her a viral YouTube star. The plan is complicated, however, by the untimely breakout of the Taksim Square uprising, which comes to flood social media and, ultimately, the lives of the characters.
The events in the book, however, are merely the setting for a deeper set of struggles. The events of the book are filtered through his flamboyant, self-centered, somewhat unreliable awareness. Çaglar has assigned himself the task of running his family, and he is doing about as well as a seventeen-year-old boy might. His mother has poorly managed depression; his distant, estranged father, a leftist architect, turns out to have a role in the Taksim uprising. His uncle, the corrupt mayor of Kiyidere, their seaside village, is a party-jumping opportunist who never met a municipal construction project he didn't like. His loyal best friend, "Microbe" Cengiz, is by a wide margin the most together person in the book, and even he is cracking due to having to take care of his dying father, poisoned by his years of work at the Pirelli tire plant. Çaglar is stretched thin, trusts no one, makes consistently bad decisions, and manages to alienate just about everyone over the course of the book. His saving grace is that he seems to be taking on the world to save his sister from a society which, from his point of view, is too strained to allow for genuine human relationships.
The narrative matches Çaglar's character well, hurtling from event to event, confrontation to confrontation, like a car out of control. His relationship to the politics of the Taksim uprising is tangential at best: He profits considerably from his connections with his conservative uncle, the mayor, even as he detests everything he stands for, and he sees the uprising merely as a platform for getting exposure for his sister. He ultimately joins half-heartedly in the protests because they at least afford him an outlet for his anomie. The book doesn't read like an attempt to capture the aims and goals of the uprising. Çaglar is, as the kids say, a hot mess, and the uprising is just the backdrop for his crumbling personal relationships and his stunning lack of self-awareness. The book ends with him finally, just barely, coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't understand himself or the events unfolding around him.
I didn't enjoy this book, but something about it compelled me to finish it. I doubt I am either the intended or expected audience for this book, the first of Serbes's novels to be translated into English. No doubt there is a great deal of subtext that is lost on me, a leftish middle class American. It left me feeling like there is a great deal about contemporary Turkey, itself torn between Europe and the Middle East, that I simply don't understand.
Our story follows the exploits of Çaglar Iyice, a seventeen-year-old in Turkey at the time of the Taksim Square uprising in 2012. He narrates his efforts to make his nine-year-old sister, Çigdem, a Michael Jackson tribute artist, famous, first by trying to get her on an Idol-type television talent competition, then by trying to make her a viral YouTube star. The plan is complicated, however, by the untimely breakout of the Taksim Square uprising, which comes to flood social media and, ultimately, the lives of the characters.
The events in the book, however, are merely the setting for a deeper set of struggles. The events of the book are filtered through his flamboyant, self-centered, somewhat unreliable awareness. Çaglar has assigned himself the task of running his family, and he is doing about as well as a seventeen-year-old boy might. His mother has poorly managed depression; his distant, estranged father, a leftist architect, turns out to have a role in the Taksim uprising. His uncle, the corrupt mayor of Kiyidere, their seaside village, is a party-jumping opportunist who never met a municipal construction project he didn't like. His loyal best friend, "Microbe" Cengiz, is by a wide margin the most together person in the book, and even he is cracking due to having to take care of his dying father, poisoned by his years of work at the Pirelli tire plant. Çaglar is stretched thin, trusts no one, makes consistently bad decisions, and manages to alienate just about everyone over the course of the book. His saving grace is that he seems to be taking on the world to save his sister from a society which, from his point of view, is too strained to allow for genuine human relationships.
The narrative matches Çaglar's character well, hurtling from event to event, confrontation to confrontation, like a car out of control. His relationship to the politics of the Taksim uprising is tangential at best: He profits considerably from his connections with his conservative uncle, the mayor, even as he detests everything he stands for, and he sees the uprising merely as a platform for getting exposure for his sister. He ultimately joins half-heartedly in the protests because they at least afford him an outlet for his anomie. The book doesn't read like an attempt to capture the aims and goals of the uprising. Çaglar is, as the kids say, a hot mess, and the uprising is just the backdrop for his crumbling personal relationships and his stunning lack of self-awareness. The book ends with him finally, just barely, coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't understand himself or the events unfolding around him.
I didn't enjoy this book, but something about it compelled me to finish it. I doubt I am either the intended or expected audience for this book, the first of Serbes's novels to be translated into English. No doubt there is a great deal of subtext that is lost on me, a leftish middle class American. It left me feeling like there is a great deal about contemporary Turkey, itself torn between Europe and the Middle East, that I simply don't understand.