![Elif Shafak - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001IO8CHK.jpg)
The Flea Palace
Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the trash at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. By turns comic and tragic, this is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice.
Readers Top Reviews
eMmAShereader
Interesting little story spinned out of... dare i say -- nothing. ☺ A little absurd, a little nostalgic, somewhat introverted... guess it suits for ppl who love looking and observing other people, who are a little quirky and introverted. Def not good for action fans - coz.. nothing really happens. Only characters. I liked it quite a lot. ☺
Mrs. Elizabeth H. Sh
Disjointed and very detailed without any sight of how the individual stories join up. Almost gave up at 60%but persevered. It got easier to comprehend but no more enjoyable. There was not a single likeable character. When it was finished I felt I had not gained a single thing from reading this book other than the fact that I now know I never want to visit Turkey
PhylBossLady;-)
Ok read, not great. Slow and rather easy to put down.
T Don
I have not enjoyed a novel this much in years. It was not the mystery of the novel but the beauty of the writing and the finely drawn, fascinating characters and atmosphere that kept me hooked. I was so sad to see it end! If I could, I would take off a half a point for some errors in usage that the editors should have picked up ("raised" for "razed"), which distracted me from time to time.
Evie B.Kindle GnatG
An interesting cultural snapshot, but a bit lacking in plot. By the time the seemingly irrelevant details make sense, you've forgotten you heard them, as the cast of characters is large and varied and the story switches between them with every chapter. Lovely prose, but not my favorite Shafak novel. (Impossible to beat The 40 Rules of Love)
