SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “Turkish Best-seller Offers Parable about Reading.” Christian Science Monitor 89, no. 103 (23 April 1997): 12.

In the following review, Rubin criticizes The New Life for lacking narrative cohesion and an engaging storyline.

Orhan Pamuk's most recent novel, The New Life, was a record-breaking best-seller in his native Turkey, which would seem to indicate a surprisingly keen appetite for contemporary fiction among that country's reading public. The phenomenon seems a little like the unexpected popularity of Umberto Eco's novels (The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum) in the United States.

Pamuk is one of the most prominent and popular writers of his generation in Turkey, and he has been gaining an international reputation as well. His work has been translated into 15 languages and two of his earlier novels, The White Castle and The Black Book, were published to critical acclaim in America.

He writes with an appealing blend of simplicity...