At the Breakfast Table

Nov 17

At the Breakfast Table by Defne Suman

Reviewed by Linda
📘📘📘

Thank you to @headofzeus for this copy!

I don’t know about you but breakfast is my favourite meal of the day: a good foundation for the hours ahead and an opportunity to reflect on the previous days’ events. And it is at a grand Turkish breakfast that Suman introduces us to the Saka family as they prepare to celebrate the 100th birthday of Shirin Saka, matriarch of the family and celebrated artist of Istanbul’s elite.
To mark the auspicious occasion, the family have invited the esteemed journalist, Burak to document Shirin’s colourful life but it’s not turning out to be the straightforward article he expected to write. Far from senile, Shirin is fully alert but tight lipped and elusive about her past but the real gatekeeper of her secrets is the shrewd butler, Sadik Usta who has been with the family since his childhood.

As the day approaches, each member of the family is overcome by snippets of the past, fading memories and things that lead them closer and closer to the details of their grandmother’s intriguing upbringing. On the eve of her 100th birthday, Shirin paints her family’s dramatic story on the walls of the dining room.

It took me some time to get to grips with all of the names and places - there are multiple points of view and I think the book would have greatly benefitted from a family tree and a map of some sort. I learnt so much about the endangered Pontic Greek culture and Romeika language in the Trabzon province and in the Black Sea. I just wish this took centre stage rather than a backstory which the reader discovers in one go much later on. The central theme in this novel is generational trauma, which the author takes great care to explore with each character. But in an effort to discuss each character’s trials and tribulations, the plot gets lost somewhat. With a bit more focus, this has the potential to be a 5/5!

contemporary fictionat the breakfast tabledefne sumanturkish authorsturkeyhead of zeustrabzonpontic greekbreakastthe silence of schehrezadewomen authors

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

At the Breakfast Table

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