Three Daughters of Eve

We spent an evening with Peri, who has an eventful night in modern-day Istanbul, from getting mugged in the streets to attending a fancy dinner party with the business elite. She's slowly unravelling as an incident triggers her to remember her past. We learn about her upbringing of being confused and torn between her mother's unquestioning Muslim faith and her father's cynical secularism. And we learn about her experiences as a student at Oxford, where she meets the two other “daughters of Eve” - Shirin and Mona - who are also Muslim, but represent polar opposites. They are drawn together by a controversial yet charismatic Professor, who's seminar on God challenges students of different faiths to engage in a dialogue beyond religion, by focusing on the elemental question of God.

I really enjoyed some of Shafak's writing about the dynamics, the violence, the wealth, the hypocrisies .. of modern day Turkey/Istanbul. But then it maybe got too plot focused, and fell a bit apart towards the end. It built so much towards a reveal at the end, but then didn't spend enough time in Oxford to really convince us of the professor's allure, or the bond between the three girls. Some elements also felt unnecessarily dramatic (the brother, the ending). And the praise of uncertainty, of being in the middle, and confused, felt a bit too over-designed.