Summer Heat

Having enjoyed ‘At the breakfast table’ I was looking forward to this new book by Defne Syman. It did not disappoint. Once again I learnt an awful lot about the history of Cyprus and its relationship with Turkey. The novel was really evocative and I could almost smell the air and taste the fruit and food described. The only let down for me was Melike. I really disliked her and found her very needy and a bit selfish. All in all though an excellent book.

Summer Heat is a complex, realistic, engaging, and occasionally heartbreaking narrative. It is a summery novel with a wonderful and bitter taste of Turkish and Greek culture and history. The author's storytelling glides through time with outstanding ability in conveying the characters' life stories and struggles. It's been a long time since a book I read captured my thoughts and won me over, like this one. The language was stunning, and it flowed seamlessly. While reading it, there were moments where I was so shocked by what I'd read that I wanted to take a break to process it all, but the story wouldn't let me go, so I kept reading and reading and getting engrossed. All the characters, from our main character, Melike, to Petro, Safinaz, Orhan, Gulbahar, and Eleni, are genuine, realistic, and loyal to the narrative. It was a valuable novel that, through family history, brought together many places, such as Turkey’s Istanbul, its Buyukada, Greece’s capital Athens, at a certain point even Germany, and eventually the island of Cyprus, weaving together entangled lives and family secrets, as well as the unique perspectives of each character and their place in the plot. The author described sorrow, grief, love, abandonment, and reunion wonderfully. Engaging, honest, and heartfelt; very emotional yet still realistic. The author treated this story meticulously, which is beautifully translated into the strong psychological component of the characters and the historically significant importance of the plot. It's a novel with good literary taste and a compelling tale. Once begun, it is impossible to put down! 

Thank you to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with an ARC of this beautiful translation!

As someone who adores the summer heat this book in one to sit and feel all the heat of a far away place.
A story of then and now, a look back at what was and what is, surrounded by a history steeped in turmoil, I loved this book.

In Summer Heat we follow Melike, an art historian who is asked by a a filmmaker Petro for a tour of the Byzantine churches and structures. As it turns out, Petro was actually sent by her presumed dead father Orhan, seeking to reconcile the family by revealing the truth about the past. The story alternates between The 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus which resulting in the division of Cyprus, the displacement of populations and loss of life and 2003.
A really worthwhile read

In 1974, Safinaz Kutsi jumped from a cliff in Cyprus, and her son, Orhan, left his home in Turkey to deal with the aftermath. Then Turkey invaded Cyprus and Orhan did not return home. Melike, 10, her granddaughter and his daughter, is devastated by the suicide and then her father’s apparent rejection of his family her mother and her brother and especially her. Over thirty years later, Melike is an Art Historian, spending the summer on Buyukada (a big island off the coast of Istanbul with her husband, when she gets a request from a documentary film producer, Petro, to meet him in Istanbul and provide information about various Byzantine churches and other structures. She is surprised by the approach but agrees. The area he has chosen is where Safinaz used to live and where Melike had spent so much of her childhood exploring, before Safinaz had left Turkey and Orhan had taken his family off to a more rural location. Wandering around with Petro brings back many memories of happy times with her father, which she had rigidly suppressed due to the rejection and the consequent destruction of her family’s life. In her mind and, she believes, in reality, he is dead. But it becomes clear that Petro has been sent by Orhan, now actually dying, who wants to explain what had really happened and thus reconcile the family.
Thus begins a reconstruction of the last nearly forty years, a family story which is intricately bound up with the history of Turkey and its relationship with Greece. It is a history which is largely ignored by the Anglophone world and necessary aspects are delicately introduced here because the story depends on it. I review crime, mystery and thriller stories so this is well outside my normal area. However, as I said in my review of her previous book (At the Breakfast Table, it has some of the tropes – family secrets, missing people, investigators – of such stories plus, in this case, murders and atrocities. In addition it is superbly written with wonderful descriptions and strongly written, complex characters, especially Mileke, from whose viewpoint the tale unravels in contemporary and flashback scenes. Incidentally, if you are like me and ‘hear’ the story as you read it you might like to know that her name is pronounced May-lee-key. Once again the translation into idiomatic English by Betsy Goeksel is virtually faultless.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.