Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active-for 10 minutes 38 seconds. … brain is still active-for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life-and the lives of others, outcasts like her.
Tequila Leila’s memories bring us back to her childhood in the provinces, a highly oppressive milieu with religion and traditions, shaped by a polygamous family with two mothers and an increasingly authoritarian father. Escaping to Istanbul, Leila makes her way into the sordid industry of sex trafficking, finding a home in the city’s historic Street of Brothels. This is a dark, violent world, but Leila is tough and open to beauty, light, and the essential bonds of friendship.
In Tequila Leila’s death, the secrets and wonders of modern Istanbul come to life, painted vividly by the captivating tales of how Leila came to know and be loved by her friends. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.
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It’s interesting how an author can be perceived internationally. For example, when I picked up a book by Elif Shafak, she was unknown to me in Canada, but in Turkey, where she resides, she is a household name. For those of you who follow the Booker Prize, you would know of Elif Shafak regardless of where you live. But I seem to be avoiding most literary works these days, as I find some of them paint their scenes too vividly, and I don’t need my imagination at all to read them.
Fortunately, there is no right or wrong way to pick a book to read — we are allowed to change our minds or our favored genres at any time. That’s what makes it fun. We may avoid certain types of fiction, but it doesn’t mean they are any less or more than others. It just means when we do finally delve back in, whole new worlds may open up again.
Elif Shafak begins her book with the death of her main character, Tequelia Lelia. A fantastic way to pull the reader into the story. But as Leila’s life ebbs away, her rich and colorful memories do not, and we learn from her much more than her life as a prostitute in Istanbul, but how she lived, loved, laughed, and made friends. Check it out.
This book was beyond amazing. Beautiful, tragic, rich. I can’t find words to describe how amazing this story is. Elif Shafak is a genius !
This is explaining emotions and love in incredible way
This novel is moving, uplifting and beautifully written. I was drawn in by such descriptions as ‘jewels glowing in the distance like fireflies over a summer meadow’ and all the heart-breaking events are peppered with honking flamingos, regal swamphens and, thankfully, some comedy moments. I still, however, can’t think about D/Ali without welling up.
It’s a brutal opening – Leila is dead; her body thrown into a wheelie bin. The first half of the book describes Leila’s memories of smells and sensations as her brain shuts down. Her thoughts fly back to monumental events which have shaped her; beginning with the memory of salt on her skin used to revive her at birth. You will need plenty of tissues to wipe your eyes throughout this novel. There is so much heartbreak from the offset, starting with Haroun deciding to give Binnaz’s baby to Suzan and then the reader watches the effect it has on Auntie and how it goes on to skew her idea of heaven. I love Leila’s childhood thoughts during those early reminiscences – why wouldn’t you eat the boiled sugar rather than use it as wax? I love this particular scene as you get to see the women behind closed doors and hear their chatter free from the hijab. The creeping sense of doom is horrible and shown by Baba’s awareness of his failings which he tries to make up for by increasing his religious zeal. The lemon and sugar episode encapsulates the whole book for me; that things aren’t always what they seem and how secrecy of feelings is the reason Leila’s life takes off on its doom-laden trajectory. The awful sinking knowledge, at the wedding, that Baba will always, even though he knows the truth, take his ‘respectable’ brother’s side.
The leap to Istanbul leaves gaps in Leila’s history which are filled in later, but despite her grim surroundings, Leila carries on making the best of her life. The slow introduction of her five amazing friends is wonderful and I like how they each have a brief vignette of their own. All of the characters are linked by the fact that they are bound to Leila by the love. These are her strawberry cake friends; her safety net; her ‘water family’ who also have great names like Nostaglia Nalan or Sabotage Sinan.
I love the little moments of detailed observation, for example, when it rains ‘purple mulberries’ on the fateful watermelon holiday where Leila, in the midst of something terrible, feels guilty for trying to wish her pain onto someone else. There are so many incidents which made my heart sink, but just when you think you can’t take it, Shafak introduces something sweet or funny into the mix: Lady Pharmacist knocking Baba’s superstition down to size and her despair over a peasant woman eating condoms; the naming of Hairy Kafka Street. The sadness over Tarkan’s future is paralleled by the ceremony where he chooses his profession and rebuffs everything, instead snatching Leila’s bracelet, with Leila delighting in the fact that he ‘wants to be me’. Leila sees her brother as a ‘trapped butterfly’ and her treatment of Tarkan is tender and moving, although she still berates herself for not having done enough for him. I love how the idea of the bracelet is picked up later in the story as the reason she first notices Jameelah, who makes her a braid in shades of purple.
There is so much wonder and love caught up in Tequila Leila – she is an inspiration and it is totally believable that her five friends would go to such lengths to give her a proper burial. The second half of the book shows her ‘water family’ refusing to let her body be buried in the Cemetery of the Companionless. And so, begins a farcical chase, with Zaynab122 providing a constant religious commentary, but the message still cuts to the quick: the five are outcasts and Leila’s death brings and binds them together forever. I like how the mystery of why Leila was killed is also brought to a conclusion. Shafak’s final chapters come full circle and I was left feeling uplifted and that there is goodness in the world. A brilliant, mesmerising and haunting read.
Haunting and beautifully written, Elif Shafak dares to address the social injustices to women in Turkey. But it is also a story of hope and love and, above all, friendship.
We have all heard the adage that just before death our lives flash before our eyes. In the aftermath of her murder, Leila’s life flashes before her, beginning at the moment of her death and for 10 minutes and 38 seconds afterward.
In Part One, for 10 minutes and 38 seconds, we journey with Leila as she relives scenes from her childhood, her joyful marriage, her relationships with her friends, the sexual abuse she lived with beginning at an early age. This corpse has a story. We smell, see, taste, hear Leila’s world, Leila’s life. The joy, the sadness, the warmth, the cruelty. Through all the heartache she has experienced, she has had friends that were there for her…to the end. “Leila did not think one could expect to have more than five friends. Just one was a stroke of luck.” Sabotage Sinan, Nostalgia Nalan, Jameelah, Hollywood Humeyra, Zaynab122…the kind of friends we would all be honored to have. I loved Zaynab122 comment “I understand her choices might not be mine, but I still respect them.” What a precious friend! Jameelah was described as “the woman who looked into people’s souls and, only when she saw what she needed to see, decided whether to open up her heart to them.” In addition to Leila’s story, we are given the background stories for each of her friends’ lives. I found it amazing how these people experienced so much abuse yet were still able to open their hearts to each other. This is also a story of the city itself – beautiful Istanbul, cruel Istanbul, ancient Istanbul, modern Istanbul. Religious Istanbul, secular Istanbul. “All these Istanbuls lived and breathed inside one another, like matryoshka dolls that had come to life.” I fell in love with Istanbul when I first visited it and again as I read this story.
Then in Part Two of the book, her friends are determined to give Leila the finest funeral Istanbul has ever seen. My heart ached along with these remarkable friends as they risked everything for their dear friend Leila.
EXCELLENT
This is an unusual novel told in an unusual way. All of the abovementioned adjectives are superficial and do not adequately described the story, characters, historical and cultural aspects described in the novel. Suffice to say that it is a page turner only because the reader wants to know the underlying reasons for the murder.
The author has terrific control of the narrative flow while using an original flashback device that could have taken over.her characters are lovingly flawed. I fell like I know much more than before about the culture and the setting.
10 Minutes and 38 Seconds was one of the few books I have not been able to put down. It combines a view of an authoritarian society over an individual life which is dismal, hopeless, and without respect with that individual’s ability to create a loyal and stable network of friends to survive life’s hardships.
This is the story of Leila. She has just been murdered, and for 10 minutes and 38 seconds, her brain remains active. In those 10 minutes, she recalls her life and the lives of her friends while she hopes to at least be found and given a proper burial. We are taken from birth through death and learn where she came from, and how she came to be where she is now.
Half of this book was pretty good. The other half was just okay. During the first half of the book, I am intrigued to learn about Leila’s life, and that of her friends and family. As the minutes tick by, each chapter gives us another picture into who she was and how her life was shaped. But after the 10 minutes are up, the second half of the book isn’t as interesting, in my opinion. It drags on as her friends try to give Leila some peace. I think the idea was a good one, but it didn’t need to be half the book. I think this would have been a better read – for me – if the reflections during the 10 minutes would have been just about the entire story.
Again – this is just my opinion, and I think the idea of this book is a great one. I really did enjoy the premise of what might go through one’s mine in the minutes after the heart has stopped, but the brain hasn’t.
For 2 weeks, whenever I told someone I was reading a book about a murdered prostitute, they looked at me like I was insane. But if you start reading this beautiful story, you won’t want to stop. It is touching beyond expectation and filled with characters whose stories make you care, especially about Leila herself.
Leila becomes one of society’s many cast-offs and befriends others like her – people who are unwanted and unloved because of who and what they are. Together, they become The Five, always there for one another, no matter what. Even death can’t stop them from loving each other.
Sweet and bittersweet, with a triumphant ending, you won’t regret reading about Leila’s last moments of life and her friends’ love for both her and one another.