SOURCE: Glazebrook, Philip. “Turkish but No Delight.” Spectator 275, no. 8719 (19 August 1995): 32.

In the following review, Glazebrook argues that The Black Book is ultimately an unsuccessful novel due to its weak narrative and underdeveloped characters.

In so far as this sprawl of a novel [The Black Book] is a narrative at all it tells the story of a Turkish lawyer's search for his wife. She may have left him for her older half-brother, his cousin, a journalist whose famous daily column appears to overshadow Turkish life. The search takes him among the clues and dead ends and street furniture of a labyrinthine vision of Istanbul, the city which enshrines Turkish history and Turkey's ambiguous leaning towards both East and West. The atmospheric picture of Istanbul, snowbound and benighted in most scenes, is marvelously composed so as to characterise that fascinating and repulsive city.

But the story is not gripping. It...