Customer Reviews

Dervishes: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Dervishes is a beautifully written novel set against the backdrop of Turkey. The writer does such a great job of describing the scenes without overwhelming the reader.

It is about an American family who has been transferred to Turkey by the U.S. Government. The father is an Ambassador, and they move frequently. He sometimes spends months away from his wife and daughter for business-and he is very secretive.

Canada is just your average twelve-year-old girl. Well, as average as she can be with moving frequently and learning new languages. She quickly makes a new friend and is soon learning her way around the city and observing her surroundings.

Grace struggles to find her place, as well as be a wife and mother. Trying to fit in with the other wives left behind by their traveling husbands, she soon spends her days drinking and socializing.

Before long, Grace and Canada seem to be growing apart while they struggle to find their place in this strange world. Disgusted with one another during the hot summer months, Grace and Canada move out beyond the local swimming pools and parties-into the city. But neither is quite prepared to maneuver on her own in Turkey, and they are soon adrift in a civilization they can't possibly grasp.

As the plot develops, the cultural differences between East and West begin to alter the storyline. With well-developed characters, a well-crafted plot, and a surprise ending, this story is an enjoyable read.

Beth Helms does a superb job with her first debut novel. I will be recommending this beautiful written novel to my friends.

Armchair Interview agrees.

The wife of a government agent (Grace) and her daughter (Canada) take turns telling the story of a year (1975-76) spent in Ankara, Turkey. Mother and daughter struggle with an often absent and alcoholic father and with their position as outsiders in a foreign culture. While attempting to find validation and love outside the home, each finds herself in morally precarious circumstances, which ultimately lead to serious consequences. At one point late in the book, Canada remembers seeing dervishes dance and describes the figures as "isolated, spinning endlessly in place." This is the source of the book's title and is also the perfect metaphor for what Canada and her mother are doing in Turkey.

Helms captures her foreign location with evocative accounts of local locations, customs, smells, and even personalities (the archetypal Turkish houseboy, for example). Dervishes also reveals the positive influence of Helms's experience as a short story writer. Like a good short story, Dervishes is precisely written with close attention to detail, leaving the impression that every experience or memory is an important part of the narrative whole. Although the narration is tightly controlled, Dervishes does not shy away from the ambiguity and messiness of human experience. In other words, the story is cleanly told but is far from clean. If any complaint can be made about this book, it's that Canada sometimes speaks with a voice well beyond her supposed 12 years. Highly recommended.

Helms is a writer with conviction and poise, and Dervishes is a finely crafted work. Gorgeous writing, lovely descriptions, and a fine debut overall. I admire the way the story weaves back and forth between Canada's more removed perspective and Grace's chapters structured in the present tense. The ending is startling and yet fitting with the overall plot. A recommended read.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. The imagery and writing are beautiful and very evocative. It needed a stronger plot, and the mother was a very unlikeable character. However it is definite worth a read just for the amazing descriptions.

A forgettable, disappointing book with overwrought descriptions and unlikeable characters.

A military-intelligence family (CIA?) is relocated to Ankara, Turkey during the Cold War Era (the early 70's). Their story is told alternately from the first person perspective of the young adolescent daughter, and then in the third person by this girl's mother. Both mother and daughter experience the tension of living in very different culture during a tense time in history. Both do their respective best to assimilate and occupy themselves. They make relationships with people, both locals and ex-pats, who eventually embroil them is subtly subversive activities. Events unfold to reveal circumstances bigger than mother and daughter have any power over, and they separately find themselves embroiled in life-shifting consequences. Mother and daughter, not close to begin with, are driven even further apart emotionally.

While an appealing premise with lots of promise, ultimately this story doesn't work. The author valiantly attempts to "show" rather than "tell" the reader what is going on (as she should), but the reader isn't shown enough. The characters fall flat to the point of barely existing at all. They never flesh out; there is no resonating human experiential "truth" emerging from the story.

I was left with a great many questions at the book's conclusion, including the following: what happens to the characters, both major and minor, after their departure from Ankara? How are they changed? What, in the end, is the point of this story at all?

I did not like this book. The characters did not come alive for me. Overall, this book was boring.