Gardens of Water: A Novel [Paperback]

Alan Drew (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

Gardens of Water is an enthralling story of two families, and two faiths, in Turkey at the time of the cataclysm of 1999. It tells of Sinan, whose daughter, Irem, dreams of escaping the confines of her family and the duties of a devout Muslim woman. She sees in Dylan, an American boy and her upstairs neighbor, the enticing promise of another life. But then a massive earthquake forces Sinan and his family to live as refugees in their own country and leads to a dangerous intimacy with their American neighbors, as Irem and Dylan fall in love. When Sinan finds himself entangled in a series of increasingly dangerous decisions, he will be pushed toward a final betrayal that will change everyone’s lives forever. Powerful and beautifully written, Alan Drew’s Gardens of Water marks the debut of a brilliant new American writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Drew's well-intentioned if overwrought first novel, cultures clash as a teenaged Kurdish girl and an American boy fall in love over the objection of the girl's father, a Muslim Kurd living in Istanbul. Sinan, a shop owner, tries to keep his American upstairs neighbors, Marcus Hamm and his family, at arm's length. But this is impossible after an earthquake devastates Istanbul, and Sinan and his family end up living in a tent city provided by American missionaries. Marcus, the director of a missionary school, lost his wife in the earthquake; she was found dead, shielding Sinan's son, who was buried alive for three days before being rescued. Now, Sinan watches as his America-obsessed daughter, Irem, falls in love with Marcus's bipolar son, Dylan, and his impressionable younger son, Ismail, slowly becomes converted to Christianity at the camp. The story moves inexorably toward a climax in which Sinan's Muslim pride and Marcus's Christian proselytizing collide with predictably tragic results. Though some may find the ideological conflict that provides the narrative thrust too textbookish, Drew, who lived in Istanbul at the time of the Marmara earthquake, effortlessly transports readers to a wrecked Istanbul and finds shards of hope in the mountains of rubble. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Fascinating . . . a remarkable first novel [of] people struggling to define themselves in a world that seems against them.”
–USA Today

“A real triumph . . . Alan Drew explores, with respect and understanding, clashes between cultures, faiths, and generations. In the end, we find ourselves feeling close to the characters and their world, as it is the very world in which we live.”
–Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants

“Sensitive and thought-provoking, Gardens of Water is set in a perfectly realized Istanbul, a city where traditionalism and modernity grind together like the fragments of a collapsing building.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“A penetrating, tightly focused novel that balances the sweetness of youth and the brooding anxieties of parenthood with a robust understanding of the Muslim-Westerner encounter.”
–Leila Aboulela, author of The Translator

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812978447
• ISBN-13: 978-0812978445
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely and terrible, March 11, 2008

By 

K. Usey (Austintexas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gardens of Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

It has been nine years since the deadly Turkish earthquake of 1999, and yet the upheavals described in Gardens of Water echo throughout the news of today. Sinan, a Kurdish refugee shopkeeper working to establish a life in Turkey, fights to keep Turkey's liberal secular influences from affecting his family. But then the earthquake strikes, and the Turkish influences are joined with even more Western influences in the form of an American family who gives shelter and aid to Sinan and his wife and children.

One of those children, his teenaged daughter Irem, has already felt the temptations of the West as personified by Dylan, the American family's son. Thrown together in a post-earthquake refugee camp, Dylan and Irem test boundaries for both of their families. Irem is forbidden to see Dylan, confined to the family tent. "She was stained with rumors because of a kiss. But it wasn't a stupid kiss; it was everything; it was what she wanted most, the only thing that made her happy. And the walls of the tent were crowding in and her mother wouldn't shut up and she thought she would explode."

Questions of honor arise... the honor of women, the honor of Kurds, the honor of Muslims, the honor of good and decent individuals caught up in a chaos beyond their control. The clash of cultures leads to tragedy, though it is a tragedy accompanied by understanding.

The resonance of current events comes with the subtle examination of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, and a more explicit description of the good intentions of American Christians and the road they pave. Sinan's father fell victim to Turkish oppression, but Sinan must acknowledge that his father provoked the oppressor. The American missionaries provide a rapid response to the disaster, bringing in desperately needed housing, food, and water, but their insistence on proselytizing and conversion brings about suspicion and even retaliation from both devout and militant Muslims in the camps. Author Alan Drew may not have set out to draw parallels, but he does draw all the difficulties faced by all of the characters with balance and care, never preaching, and understanding the conflicts he limns so well results in a deeper understanding of the conflicts we face now.

The complexities of the issues are served well by Drew's talent for storytelling, and his command of language is masterful. Early on, Sinan "watched the streak of black water beyond the rooftops, and the city lights strewn around the bay like a necklace. The tea-black sky floated above him, punctured with only three stars, just three tiny pinpricks. At night in the village there were more stars than night sky, more world out there staring back than there were people in the whole of this city, probably more than there were people in all of the world's cities." The transitions between plot development and thought processes, between exterior event and interior monologues, are seamless, descriptions are lyrical yet never self-conscious or forced. If there were "little darlings," he either killed them all or wove them in so skillfully that the language is never a distraction from the story but rather lifts it up and carries it along. "Gardens of Water," with its masterful blending of fiction and historical fact, is one of the finest stories told in recent years.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Many horrible things happen in the world," I, too, wish I had someone to blame for them.", March 30, 2008

By 

Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gardens of Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

The 1999 Mamara earthquake, approximately 7.6 in magnitude, struck northwestern Turkey on August 17, 1999 at about 3:01am local time. Even though the event only lasted for thirty-seven seconds, the event ended up killing up to forty-five thousand people and left approximately half a million people homeless. 50,000 houses were heavily damaged, 2000 other buildings collapsed and 4000 other building were heavily damaged.

This terrible disaster forms the core of Alan Drew's first novel, Gardens of Water, a story that mirrors a seismic shift, not in just the earth, but as also lived by a poor Kurdish family who find themselves caught up in an evolving world and in the evolving politics of their country where Turks and Kurds, Christian, and Moslems inevitably clash with unexpected consequences.

Consigned to virtually living in a ramshackle tent city, after the earthquake destroys their apartment block in downtown of Golcuk, the club footed grocer, Sinan Basioglu, his wife, Nilufer, along with their fifteen-year-old daughter, Irem, and their nine-year-old son, Ismail, are subjected to the whims of fate as their lives become one long trial after another.

A strong, but devoutly conservative man who is fiercely protective of his family, particularly of Ismail whom he loves with an unadulterated abundance, Sinan is at first unaware of the more serious implications that surface when he becomes involved with the an American director of one of the expensive private missionary schools, Marcus Roberts, and his wife Sarah and their tattooed son Dylan.

The Robert's have been living in the same apartment block, but they are unexpectedly thrust together with Sinan and his family and it is Sinan who ultimately resents these Americans who are pushing their way into his life, these Americans who are in league with the Turks and have helped the Turkish government destroy Kurdish villages.

In the aftermath of the quake, Sarah has sacrificed her own life so that Ismail may live, when he falls and then wakes in Sarah's arms with the water she had placed on his lips. Meanwhile, Sinan is sorry for Marcus' loss, but he needs to make the American understand that the vulnerable Irem must not be seen with his son Dylan.

Even on the night of the quake, Dylan had tried to touch her, and panicked, she has silently tried to pull away. But the poor Irem just cannot help herself; she's drawn to the dashing and seductive Dylan, partly out of sexual curiosity, but also because she's trying to find the love that her father has for most of his life denied her. All her life she's known that Sinan has favored her younger brother rather than here and this knowledge throws her into a maelstrom of insecurities.

As Dylan and Irem continue to meet for furtive trysts at night by the seashore, an evolving personal, political and indeed competitive dynamic develops between Marcus and Sinan. Sinan resents the fact that he's led a hardscrabble life defined by blood, death and destruction, when he hears of Marcus' life, his trips to and from America and his simple ability to make the choice to quit his job. This is so outside the realm of Sinan's experience.

Considering that the this delicate family dynamic is doomed to rupture, Sinan's role as patriarch and provider for his family is bought into question when they relocate to a sodden and makeshift camp with only a group of American Christian missionaries to support them, feed them and offer them some measure of comfort. It is here finally, that Sinan knows he needs to do something, where everyone is gone, and everything has changed.

Faced with an errant, daughter, willfully disobeying him and flirting with the American boy, and now the Americans themselves, here to help, even though everyone in his home town knows that America supported the Turkish paramilitary, Sinan is almost helpless to unravel all of the emotional baggage created years ago when he was a small boy in his old childhood home of Yesilli.

A sense of desolation is constant in this heart-breaking novel, especially for the Sinan as he fanatically tries to find work, forced to carry televisions through the crowded streets of Istanbul, his swollen foot aching as he walks, the weight of them almost unbearable; and the virginal Irem as she gradually becomes torn between the affections of her young American beau and her stubborn, old-world father who refuses to let he go her own way.

Weaving into the narrative the themes of god and death and how the dead can finally win over all the living people, Drew has written a fascinating account of modern Turkey that combines the cosmopolitanism of Istanbul with the smaller towns, all ravaged by this terrible earthquake. The author also writes a tender account of an average family, who are forced once and for all, to confront the extraordinary compassion and capacity for forgiveness that lies within their hearts. Mike Leonard March 08.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alan Drew's Amazing Writing Debut !, February 5, 2008

By 

C. Streb "book bugs" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gardens of Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

First time author Alan Drew has crafted a story that offers everything a reader could want in a novel. His prose is somehow both lush and spare - it is a story lovingly told. The exotic location backgrounds the compelling saga of a Kurdish family whose life is ruptured as a result of the massive 1999 Turkish earthquake. The brilliantly told story explores how, in stressful times, clashes of culture, religion, age and economic status can lead to unexpected consequences. The hackneyed phrase "you won't be able to put it down" surely describes my reading experience. Don't miss this stunning novel by this new author - I eagerly await his next work.