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allyemmahaworth's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book is not one for those who like a tidy ending. It leaves room for thinking and consideration and left me feeling I wasn’t quite smart enough too grasp the depth of the discussion of God that it’s constructed around.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture, Religious bigotry, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Alcoholism, Islamophobia, Child death, Suicide attempt, Sexism, and Rape
internationalreads's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Classism, Death, Grief, Violence, Mental illness, Sexism, Xenophobia, Pregnancy, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, Islamophobia, Animal death, Misogyny, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Toxic relationship
sarahec's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Toxic relationship, Child death, and Religious bigotry
tapina's review
informative
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, and Suicide attempt
lasunflower's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I really enjoyed this book. The writing is really good - not too much description, but enough to create beautiful pictures. I really relate to Peri, both in terms of her childhood experience of religion and her confusion with religion (though I grew up in a half Christian half non religious family rather than Muslim) as well as her timid/quiet nature. I think people who grew up surrounded by religion or who have doubted their faith would particularly enjoy this book.
I definitely need to read it again. I feel like I would be able to pick up even more from this book. I feel like there were almost too much to think about in one read!
I have read some reviews that were not keen on Peri's suicide attempt. I see why, but I think it is also not so much a surprise than others have suggested. Whilst I did not see it coming, it does make sense. She had been haunted by her brother's death since the death, and she was never a particularly happy person.
I also enjoyed the tension of Azur created by Shafak. It leads you down to suspect him for sexual misconduct and power hunger, but it seems that at the end, even the reader had got the wrong end of the stick. An interesting thought when one considers Azur is hinted at being God, symbolising Peri's relationship with God
I definitely need to read it again. I feel like I would be able to pick up even more from this book. I feel like there were almost too much to think about in one read!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Suicide attempt
vaniavela's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Peri, a woman with a stable, upper-class life, is over-jumped by an robbery. She is a caring mother, but once upon a time she was a student in Oxford, England. When an old Polaroid snapshot falls out of her expensive handbag during the mugging, all the memories of that time [and of two friendships long gone] come flooding back to her.
This is a slow-paced book, full of rich and realistic descriptions, with which we embark on an exploration of faith, religion and finding our own path.
Three Daughters of Eve is a very philosophical book. I found it interesting to soak in these new perspectives and to meet a character like Peri.
Unfortunately, when I picked up this book, I got carried away with the idea that the friend group would be more important. The title of the book gave me the idea that this story would revolve around them, and their ups and downs, but more than that, we were given an introspection of Peri's life. I don't mention it as a complaint, I loved getting to know her story, but I was expecting more of her friends.
I really recommend this book.
CW: Graphic [Sexual assault, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry] Moderate [Suicide attempt, Torture, Child death] Minor [Animal death, Rape]
This is a slow-paced book, full of rich and realistic descriptions, with which we embark on an exploration of faith, religion and finding our own path.
Three Daughters of Eve is a very philosophical book. I found it interesting to soak in these new perspectives and to meet a character like Peri.
Unfortunately, when I picked up this book, I got carried away with the idea that the friend group would be more important. The title of the book gave me the idea that this story would revolve around them, and their ups and downs, but more than that, we were given an introspection of Peri's life. I don't mention it as a complaint, I loved getting to know her story, but I was expecting more of her friends.
I really recommend this book.
CW: Graphic [Sexual assault, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry] Moderate [Suicide attempt, Torture, Child death] Minor [Animal death, Rape]
Content Warnings
Graphic: Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Torture, Child death, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Rape and Animal death
aseel_reads's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
the book was hard to get into at the beginning, the writing style is a stylistic choice that i don't really enjoy (says one sentence for the plot, next paragraph is some side tangent fact and then goes back to the plot), but then i got used to it and i enjoyed the story. was super intrigued about the scandal mentioned in the blurb. so the middle part was great and then the ending... very underwhelming and not at all what i expected. i didn't like how it ended at all. the reader was given expectations and they were definitely not met.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child death, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Islamophobia, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, and Torture
Minor: Rape
jnb2796's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Islamophobia
Minor: Abortion, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child death, and Suicide attempt
iridium's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
So here are two things I hate: dinner-party narratives and campus novels.
Dinner-party narratives usually take the form of stage plays rather than novels, but I hate them because they're pretty much all the same, and to me the urge to write a play about a dinner party can only come from from a writer whose ability to express emotions in any way other than snide passive-aggression has atrophied.
Meanwhile, campus novels are always soccer-mom conservative-talk-radio alarmism disguised in a tweed jacket. All this horseshit about "campus radicals" and "hookup culture" and it inevitably rings completely false, like they're written by someone who's never been to college and gets all their impressions of what college is like from the Daily Caller.
So given these opinions of mine, what compelled me to read a book that's half about a dinner party and half about a university experience? I'm not sure. I guess a part of me is always yearning for someone to come along and tell these stories properly. So is that what happened here? Kind of.
Readers should be aware that the back cover description/title/cover of the US paperback edition is a little misleading about the contents of the book. It's not that it's a lie, necessarily, but the front and back cover both work together to give the impression that Shirin, Mona, and Peri (the Sinner, the Believer, and the Confused, respectively) are three co-protagonists. Peri is the only protagonist. Shirin and Mona don't get introduced until almost halfway through the book. A substantial section of the book is about Peri's childhood in Istanbul, not Oxford. The more relevant Sinner and Believer are her father and mother.
This isn't a bad thing, though. I enjoyed reading about Peri's life. Many parts of this book really resonated with me, even the political discussion they were having at the dinner party. Shafak painted a portrait of Istanbul here, where on one hand the wealthy urbanites there are just like the wealthy urbanites in the West, while on the other hand there was that ever-present element of danger and instability that people were trying to ignore.
The campus part was tolerable because it rang a little more true to me. It focused on the intellectual side, which so many campus novels don't. I kind of hated Professor Azur, though, not gonna lie. I thought he was full of it, just as dogmatic about God in his own way. He reminded me of that one skeevy professor in Animal House who was like, "literature is bullshit, I hate teaching this, do you ever think about if our whole universe is in an atom on a giant's fingernail?" This didn't really bother me because it didn't feel like the book was demanding that I like him, just that I could see why Peri would be drawn to him.
Then, let's account for the bullshit mainstays of campus novels, which are: 1) "I'm the only authentic person here so I don't fit in with all these snooty rich kids", 2) hand-wringing about drugs and sex on campuses 3) Broad-side-of-the-barn "satire" about political correctness.
Even though Peri struggled with money, there wasn't a whole lot of #1, just because the book didn't act like she was the only person there who was working class or foreign. #2 was thankfully not in the book at all. #3 was mostly absent from the book, although there was regrettably a bit about deplatforming at the end. So for these reasons, I found the university sections of the book compelling and readable.
The dinner party segments weren't quite as interesting as the rest of the book (until the end) but they weren't boring. They were more tolerable because they didn't take up the whole book, and I guess it did seem important, the things they were talking about. Even though they as people were meant to be vapid, they had real concerns in their lives.
As for Shirin and Mona, I definitely felt that Mona was a flatter character than Shirin was. I think it was that Shirin's character felt very specific to her time and place while Mona's didn't, and you'd think it would. I thought her family being in New Jersey at the time of 9/11 would be more significant than it ended up being; at the very least, I thought it'd bring about a change in her. It didn't seem to. Another thing is that Shirin had to do with the plot, while Mona didn't. She was sort of superfluous.
The themes were occasionally expressed in a way that was sort of on-the-nose (so the following is not a direct quote, just something to help you get the general idea, but it'd be like "her father was West and her mother was East, and they clashed within her just like they clashed within Istanbul"/"professor Azur was like God, himself"/"listening to Mona and Shirin argue reminded Peri of listening to her mother and father argue" etc.). I did love the themes, though. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the ending. I might have different opinions about it once I've had time to mull it over.
I had been struggling with whether to give this a 4 or 5 stars. I settled on 4, just because it took me a while to read it, and because of the on-the-nose moments I mentioned earlier.
Dinner-party narratives usually take the form of stage plays rather than novels, but I hate them because they're pretty much all the same, and to me the urge to write a play about a dinner party can only come from from a writer whose ability to express emotions in any way other than snide passive-aggression has atrophied.
Meanwhile, campus novels are always soccer-mom conservative-talk-radio alarmism disguised in a tweed jacket. All this horseshit about "campus radicals" and "hookup culture" and it inevitably rings completely false, like they're written by someone who's never been to college and gets all their impressions of what college is like from the Daily Caller.
So given these opinions of mine, what compelled me to read a book that's half about a dinner party and half about a university experience? I'm not sure. I guess a part of me is always yearning for someone to come along and tell these stories properly. So is that what happened here? Kind of.
Readers should be aware that the back cover description/title/cover of the US paperback edition is a little misleading about the contents of the book. It's not that it's a lie, necessarily, but the front and back cover both work together to give the impression that Shirin, Mona, and Peri (the Sinner, the Believer, and the Confused, respectively) are three co-protagonists. Peri is the only protagonist. Shirin and Mona don't get introduced until almost halfway through the book. A substantial section of the book is about Peri's childhood in Istanbul, not Oxford. The more relevant Sinner and Believer are her father and mother.
This isn't a bad thing, though. I enjoyed reading about Peri's life. Many parts of this book really resonated with me, even the political discussion they were having at the dinner party. Shafak painted a portrait of Istanbul here, where on one hand the wealthy urbanites there are just like the wealthy urbanites in the West, while on the other hand there was that ever-present element of danger and instability that people were trying to ignore.
The campus part was tolerable because it rang a little more true to me. It focused on the intellectual side, which so many campus novels don't. I kind of hated Professor Azur, though, not gonna lie. I thought he was full of it, just as dogmatic about God in his own way. He reminded me of that one skeevy professor in Animal House who was like, "literature is bullshit, I hate teaching this, do you ever think about if our whole universe is in an atom on a giant's fingernail?" This didn't really bother me because it didn't feel like the book was demanding that I like him, just that I could see why Peri would be drawn to him.
Then, let's account for the bullshit mainstays of campus novels, which are: 1) "I'm the only authentic person here so I don't fit in with all these snooty rich kids", 2) hand-wringing about drugs and sex on campuses 3) Broad-side-of-the-barn "satire" about political correctness.
Even though Peri struggled with money, there wasn't a whole lot of #1, just because the book didn't act like she was the only person there who was working class or foreign. #2 was thankfully not in the book at all. #3 was mostly absent from the book, although there was regrettably a bit about deplatforming at the end. So for these reasons, I found the university sections of the book compelling and readable.
The dinner party segments weren't quite as interesting as the rest of the book (until the end) but they weren't boring. They were more tolerable because they didn't take up the whole book, and I guess it did seem important, the things they were talking about. Even though they as people were meant to be vapid, they had real concerns in their lives.
As for Shirin and Mona, I definitely felt that Mona was a flatter character than Shirin was. I think it was that Shirin's character felt very specific to her time and place while Mona's didn't, and you'd think it would. I thought her family being in New Jersey at the time of 9/11 would be more significant than it ended up being; at the very least, I thought it'd bring about a change in her. It didn't seem to. Another thing is that Shirin had to do with the plot, while Mona didn't. She was sort of superfluous.
The themes were occasionally expressed in a way that was sort of on-the-nose (so the following is not a direct quote, just something to help you get the general idea, but it'd be like "her father was West and her mother was East, and they clashed within her just like they clashed within Istanbul"/"professor Azur was like God, himself"/"listening to Mona and Shirin argue reminded Peri of listening to her mother and father argue" etc.). I did love the themes, though. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the ending. I might have different opinions about it once I've had time to mull it over.
I had been struggling with whether to give this a 4 or 5 stars. I settled on 4, just because it took me a while to read it, and because of the on-the-nose moments I mentioned earlier.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Colonisation, Death, and Islamophobia
mariebrunelm's review
challenging
dark
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I first read this book last year, having been drawn to the diverse take on dark academia, and the first time round the book had come very close to being a favourite of the year. The good news is, it's just as engaging the second time round!
You have elements of mystery, a pinch of magical realism, nuanced characters, diverse representation, gorgeous prose and thought-provoking conversations.
This book very much feels like basking in the light of a very charismatic and very knowledgeable speaker, you know the kind? These fascinating people you could spend hours listening to. That's close to what I felt reading this book, in a fiction format. I just wish the ending was a little less rushed, but that's probably because I would have happily read a couple more hundred pages like that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Alcohol, Suicide attempt, and Xenophobia
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, and Self harm