Books to Die For

  I believe that its strength lies in its vicious simplicity and supramodern minimalism. The language is plain or, in places, even simple, almost like the spoken language of the child narrator. The story is without frills or playthings, flowing along smoothly without getting caught up in unnecessary details. And in each new chapter it successfully injects the reader—in this case, me—with another dose of rage.

  If I were to very briefly summarize the story, it would go something like this. A mother and daughter are trying to live their lives while disguising their identities. In the book, they don’t have names. One is called simply “Mother,” and the other “my Bambi,” in reference to the book they often read together. The majority of the book is narrated by the little girl, who naturally blossoms a bit over the course of the novel. She’s in complete awe of her mother, and really, truly loves her. Her mother is virtually the only person in her life. She is everything to the girl. Here is the very first sentence of the novel: “Nothing about Mother is like anyone else. But then again, I can’t say I’ve known anyone else.”

  Then as we read, we learn that the mother is a killer. They’re on the run, constantly. The span of time between each murder grows shorter and shorter. They continue to run until . . .

  It sounds simple, doesn’t it, especially considering how Perihan Mağden makes such obvious reference to “Bambi” from the very beginning of the novel. This is from the first chapter:

  In the double bed of a hotel room, propped up against the pillows, the covers pulled up. The two of us illuminated by the bedside lamp, you reading Bambi to me. And Bambi isn’t just any book. It’s important for us.

  “It’s full of signs,” Mother says of Bambi. “Rocket flares.”

  There are two important people in Bambi. Two creatures, that is: Bambi and his mother.

  My mother’s so annoyed at Bambi’s mother. I mean, if we met Bambi’s mother, came across her in one of the hotels, Mother might beat her up. Teach her a good lesson. That’s how mad she is at Bambi’s mother.

  “If Bambi’s mother hadn’t been such a fool, hadn’t been so careless, Bambi would never have been left alone in the forest. If you’re Bambi’s mother, you have to stay alive. You must never leave Bambi alone.”

  I know what Mother means.

  Mother will never be foolish or careless, will never leave me motherless. Never.

  But no, that’s not how it is. That’s not how it is at all!

  At this point, a few words about the author would seem to be in order. You see, in our country, Turkey, Perihan Mağden is known primarily as a newspaper columnist rather than as a novelist. Her writing reflects her quick wit and sharp tongue; it’s mischievous, and she never censors her progressive thoughts, nor does she try to disguise her anger. She writes not only about politics, but about daily life and popular entertainment as well. Due to her antimilitarist articles, the Turkish Armed Forces have taken her to court, having charged her with the bizarre crime of “alienating the people from the military service.” A wide array of people, ranging from the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to a folk singer who has voiced Fascist, ultranationalist views, have pressed charges against Mağden in libel suits. And in turn she, to put it in her own words, has doled out their compensation without batting an eyelash.

  No columnist can top her when it comes to questioning commonly held norms and breaking the mold. And, because she approaches issues analytically and interprets them precisely as they should be interpreted, her target is left with little recourse but to take her to court. There are so many issues and people to which she’s opposed that, other than her devoted readership, the majority of which I imagine must belong to that category of “youth who stubbornly hold on to their passion,” it is hard for her to remain in the good graces of, well, pretty much anyone. But then, frankly, I doubt that she could care less.

  I agree wholeheartedly with Orhan Pamuk’s description: “Perihan Mağden is one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of our time.”

  Now to turn our attention back to Escape (which, indeed, we should), things progress slowly during the first few chapters. In fact, you understand only quite late in the book that you’re actually dealing with a crime novel, and, once you do, everything you’ve read thus far starts to make sense. As the story moves forward, and the noose tightens around the mother and daughter, the novel picks up speed, sprinting toward a breathtaking finale. At this point, as you read, you start asking yourself, Good Lord, what kind of a traumatic mother-daughter relationship is this? and, What kind of a traumatic world is this?

  How far will a mother go to protect her child? Since even the gentlest of animals grows wild and vicious when its young are in peril and its maternal instinct to protect is triggered, one must wonder: Under the same circumstances, how long can a human being possibly remain tame? Though this appears to be the fundamental question, we come upon another chain of questions when we dig deeper. From what, or whom, is the mother in Escape trying to protect her daughter? From how much of the outside world can she possibly insulate her? What is the “purified world” that she desires, the one in which she strives to live and in which she wishes her daughter to live as well? Is it even a possibility, or is it merely a utopian dream? Will those ranged against mother and daughter ever allow such a thing to be?

  No, they won’t, of course. And in order not to allow it, everyone—sometimes consciously and spitefully, like the land registry office manager and the hotel receptionist in New York, and sometimes unconsciously, such as the police at the end—takes the opportunity to withhold the very chance of such a life from them.

  Mağden’s strength as a writer lies in her ability to make the reader take sides. As is the case with Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley quintet, Mağden gets the reader to side with the criminal, to empathize. The reader starts to see reason in the crime, which, in Highsmith’s hands, even becomes justifiable to a degree. That is to say, no matter how intelligent, educated, or “civilized” we may fancy ourselves to be, Highsmith is able to arouse our deep-seated potential for savagery. At times she makes us think, Come on, get it over with already. Kill the guy, why don’t you! Sometimes, when the desired murder occurs, whether between the lines, or in all of its naked savagery, she makes us think, If I were him, I would have done the exact same thing! This is actually a very provocative, very anarchist sentiment; believe me, I know. Once you begin to think like that, to deem murder justifiable, you might find yourself caught up by a different wind, whisked away in a whole new direction. Before you know it, you’re delving into your own past, devising vicious schemes. For my own part, I have most certainly gotten caught up in such a wind. Any regrets? No, sir, Your Honor!

  As with Highsmith, so, too, with Mağden: by the time we reach the finale of Escape, that empathy for the perpetrator of the novel’s crimes becomes painful to the point of being almost unbearable. The book draws inexorably to its conclusion; it has no choice. The ending is undesired, if not unexpected. And there we are, left to our own devices, alone with that sense of justification, with that potential for justified savagery (in this case, murder) having welled up inside of us, a giant swollen tangle of knots about to burst.

  It is precisely that potential for savagery—which is so difficult to accept, to digest—that made me feel like I’d taken a hard punch in the gut. In order to be certain of the power of that punch, I reread the book after some time had gone by, and then later I had another look at it as I was getting ready to write this essay. Indeed, each time it had the same effect.

  Of course, this is not the first, nor the last, time that Perihan Mağden has done this. Her novel before Escape, 2 Girls, had a similar power, although it was, in my opinion, a bit gentler, balancing the harshness with a dash of humor here and there. Clearly it was preparing readers for Escape, the novel that would succeed it.

  Ali and Ramazan, however, which was published three years after Escape, is a devastating true-crime novel that cuts to the quick. Its veracity, and
the poignancy of the topics upon which it touches, result in a work that is a cut above your typical crime novel. Yet again it doesn’t pull any punches, no, sir!

  In all three of these novels, each of which deals with different emotions and tackles a very different subject matter, Perihan Mağden’s writing style is at once divergent yet clearly shares a common source, and is without exception distinctively minimalist. While in 2 Girls she makes relatively frequent use of plays on language, repetition, and abbreviation, in Escape she employs, for the most part, the simple, plain language of the narrating child. As I mentioned above, this apparent simplicity has a similar effect on the reader to a bright fluorescent light. It is glaringly naked and, for that precise reason, painful to look upon.

  The language of much of Ali and Ramazan, meanwhile, is more like that of a news report, laying the soul of the novel bare. It contrasts with the language of the young men who people it, young men who have grown up in orphanages, are starved for love, and therefore grow madly attached to the first welcoming embrace that offers refuge. Their language naturally belongs to a lower class and, where necessary, is tinged with the slang, tone, and litanies of swear words that belong to the slums.

  I view these three novels as a trilogy of books that complete one another, each adding depth to the reading experience of the others, with each subsequent title multiplying the overall violence and bitter effect. And that’s how I would recommend these books as well, as a trilogy. Perihan Mağden presents her reader with a different world. You may hate it, you may feel a wrenching pain inside, and the potential for savagery she invokes may give you a cramp in the stomach. But one thing that you will not feel is indifferent.

  Literature and music are two branches of art that I have always thought of as being analogous to each other. I come up with the most outrageous analogies for the two. Such analogies may be repulsive to some, beneficial to others, and in some cases meaningful to me, and to me alone. Nevertheless, I deign to repeat one here. My more attentive readers will know that I have a penchant for baroque, bel cantos, and the early romantics of classical music and, for the most part, have no taste at all for twenty-first-century contemporary music. However, perhaps because I find it somewhat analogous to baroque, I do like minimalism, and particularly admire Philip Glass. His unembellished music, with its extensive repetitions meandering among just a few notes, has a complex, profound structure that seems simple on the first take, and, when I lose myself in it, makes me feel purified. And sometimes it serves to smooth my ruffled nerves.

  Escape, too, in many ways, is precisely just such a minimalist jewel.

  Mehmet Murat Somer was born in Ankara, Turkey, and is the author of the acclaimed Hop-Çiki-Yaya crime novels set in Istanbul. The series, which consists of six novels so far, features an unnamed amateur sleuth who also happens to be a transvestite. The latest to be published in English is The Serenity Murders.

  The Perk

  by Mark Gimenez (2008)

  ANNE PERRY

  * * *

  Mark Gimenez grew up in Galveston County, Texas. He graduated magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 1980, was hired by a Dallas law firm, and eventually became a partner, but after ten years he walked away in order to start his own practice, and write fiction. His first novel to be published was The Color of Law in 2005, although he had already written two books that remain unpublished. Of one of those books, he remarked to New Zealand website Crime Watch that “once it got to 1,600 pages I stopped, you know because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. And a big part of that was not outlining it first, just starting writing . . . from then on I’ve outlined.” He has since written four more books, the latest of which is Accused.

  * * *

  Why would I recommend a book to someone? Firstly, because I enjoyed reading it myself. It drew me in and made me care about its characters. It had emotion, tension, vivid scenes, sometimes humor, and above all compassion. I could not recommend one that I had read and then forgotten.

  Secondly, I would not choose one in which I did not admire the quality of the writing. Above all, the issues must be ones that have a depth and immediacy, and yet also hold some element that is universal.

  Is that asking a lot? Of course it is. And even that is not all. If I am going to place it higher on my list than others, then it must make me see something in a way I had not done before, waken new thoughts in me, change my judgments and my understanding. I should be a little different after I close its covers. I should have been added to.

  Now I’m really asking a lot!

  The Perk, by Mark Gimenez, did all of these things for me.

  It begins rather slowly, with the main character, Beck Hardin, a lawyer and ex–star football player, returning to his childhood home in the Texas Hill Country. He is newly a widower, with two small children. That area of America is highly individual and one I had not known even existed. The sense of utter bereavement in the hero is devastating. It doesn’t sound very inviting yet, does it?

  But immediately I cared, especially for the little girl, Meggie, who refuses to believe that her mother isn’t going to come back someday soon. She carries her doll with her everywhere, and confides in it as if it were a direct contact with the mother she needs so much. How desperately human! Is that not the child in all of us whom we long to comfort, but don’t know how?

  How many of us have come home again, wounded at heart, needing the familiar to heal us, and found not much of it is really as we remembered? There are old relationships to be mended, and that can be so much more difficult and painful than we thought it would. People are complicated, and they have wounds, too.

  Before the end of the first chapter I was totally involved. I even felt the unique nature of the land and its history of settlement, its harsh economic difficulties, and my mind’s eye saw some of its beauty. I felt its heat, tasted the dust, the pride, and the poverty. I was soaked when it rained and I smelled the wet earth’s fragrance. And I knew why to win the big football championship was everyone’s dream. It was the way to be on top again.

  And then, so naturally, the crime was upon me, there with its grief and the burning injustice that it remained unresolved. Time was desperately urgent. The statute of limitations on rape was about to run out, after which the wound might never even begin to heal. The young girl dies. Her father’s life was wrecked by it. He is Beck’s old friend and he asks for help, before it is too late.

  I didn’t want to get to the end because I was enjoying the journey too much. I identified with the people, I liked their company, but I had to find out what happened. I had to see justice done, the innocent illegal immigrant boy freed from the weight and ruin of suspicion. Perhaps it is not a pleasant part of my nature, but I also wanted to see the violent and arrogant local bully punished, in spite of the fact that he was the football star who could guarantee their victory, which made him all but immune. So I raced on, page after page.

  But if it is no more than an emotional satisfaction that I gain from the reading experience then I would simply say that the book in question is good, and one should go ahead and enjoy it. For me to recommend it to others, though, there must be unusual and lasting qualities. I like surprises, elements I did not see coming. I think we all appreciate those. But far more than a twist in events, I truly savor a twist of emotions. I love to learn something of human nature that I had seen but not understood. What greater gift could a book give you than to leave you wiser at the end, with a deeper compassion toward people to whom you previously had been too impatient even to listen? It is so easy to judge without thought.

  Yes, the hero of The Perk is good, very human, and in the end he is also genuinely heroic. The mystery is laid bare in all its compelling tragedy. The old relationships are mended, deepened, but there is no sugar-sweet answer. There is laughter, a little romance, but this is reality. Some griefs do not end.

  What makes it remarkable is that Fredericksburg is in so many ways a mirror of all small towns. In its cha
racters I see people I have known, and reflections of other tragedies I did not understand at the time because I thought the players too different from myself. Now I see their lives with acute empathy. Their dreams, their hungers, and their desperation are so much more like mine than I had imagined. In their shoes, I would have felt as they did! I might even have done as they did.

  I have never willingly watched a football match in my life (although I have done so on occasion to please friends) and yet now I understand the passion and the heartache of a hyped-up teenaged football player in Texas. I know why he feels as he does, and I care. I have to be wiser and richer for that.

  Something that can give me a new gentleness and make me rethink old conclusions—and enjoy doing so—has to be a good book.

  Today mysteries are much more than “who did it—why—how—and we must see them get caught.” They are about reality, about complicated lives where something went wrong and people struggled to understand it, and then, as much as was possible, to put it right.

  It sounds such a pompous phrase, but I can’t think of a better one: they address “the human condition,” but they do it with a darn good story.

  The Perk is one you should try.

  Anne Perry (b. 1938) has published an astonishing number of mystery novels, in addition to young-adult fiction, fantasy writing, and assorted short stories. Her two principal series, both historical, revolve around couples: the Monk novels are set in the earlier Victorian era, and concern the amnesiac investigator William Monk and the woman who eventually becomes his wife, the nurse Hester Latterly; the Pitt novels, meanwhile, feature the London police inspector Thomas Pitt, a man of humble origins, and his upper-class wife, Charlotte, and are set at the end of the nineteenth century. Morality and justice, sin and repentance, redemption and the possibility of forgiveness, are all recurring themes in her work. Visit her online at www.anneperry.net.