Three of us, Tracey, Maren and Philippe, met for an intimate evening at La Colchide, a Georgian restaurant in the 18th. The first impression was confirmed when we got our dishes: This place really merits a visit. They certainly deserve a mention in our "Good Eats" corner! Never expected a beetroot salad could be that tasteful - because I never tried the spiced up version at La Colchide. Or that eggplant rolled in a mixture with nuts and pomegranet would taste delicious !
Now, to the book: Surprisingly, two thumbs down and one thumb up. After all the advocating before the meeting we couldn't help but wonder - where were the fans of the book?
In the end however we realized that there was not a big difference between the thumbs up and down. The appreciation of the writing was quite similar, on the positive side, it gave a good introduction to a region and a cultural context one is rarely exposed to.
We all agreed that the writing was at moments lengthy, or as Philippe said: he discovered himself skipping pages. And we all felt it to be somewhat strange that a couple with such big differences in their cultural background could have such a harmonious relationship. No signs of real struggle or fighting - best word we found for the feeling the book conveyed about the relationship was "flat". There seems to be no psychological depth in the description of what's happening between two people, love seems to "conquer all" and is responsible for smoothing out every incidence where one might expect some conflict. On the other hand: The book is written from the male point of view, who often have the reputation of not lingering long on those kind of questions (sorry guys, it's our impression). Ali seems to belong to that species too.
Tracey was also lost in the many details of the historical back and forth - on that point we definitely missed Catherine's insights! We missed also the historical backgrounds to understand why the Armenians were presented as the bad guys.
A question Maren picked up from the book: What defines an Asian, what a European? What does Ali's father mean, when he tells his son that he's not an Asian anymore? We didn’t get to a conclusive answer.
There was also the question about the mysterious author. Here a link to a Kansas University document which treats the question : https://crees.ku.edu/sites/c
Maren & Tracey
And here some of Tracey's delicious pictures:
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