The apartment building that we lived in during Covid had a community library of sorts on the garage level. Stocked by the hundreds of residents, the three shelves carried a rotating assortment of fiction, self-help books, partisan political tomes, and biographies. It was there that I picked up The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk. I'd heard of this fairly prolific Turkish writer but I'd never read anything by him other than leafing through his well-reviewed Snow at a bookstore once. On the surface the novel is about a boy serving as a well apprentice in post-WWII Turkey, two possible murders, one case of possible incest, and late 20th century capitalism in the country. These subject cut quite a wide swath, particularly because Pamuk uses them comment on political exile and the deep cutting power of father-son relationships.
Pamuk uses two myths to frame a narrative which flows quickly--the first you've heard of: the Oedipus tale where the son unknowingly kills his father; the second you likely haven't Ferdawsi's Rustam and Sohrab where the father unknowingly kills his son. The latter is taken from the epic Persian poem Shahnameh which tells both the mythical and quasi-true history of the Persian empire.
From the novel's title one might assume the tale is about the enigmatic red-haired woman, however, it's clear she's a mere backdrop by which Pamuk explores the ways in which a father and son can both love and hurt each other and the way this relationship spills over into society at large. And despite claiming that Snow would be his first and only political novel, its obvious that much of this exploration is also a commentary on the rise of President Erdogan, particularly with the following quote:
t seems we would all like a strong, decisive father telling us what to do and what not to do. Is it because it is so difficult to distinguish what we should and shouldn't do, what is moral and right from what is sinful and wrong? Or is it because we constantly need to be reassured that we are innocent and have not sinned? Is the need for a father always there, or do we feel it only when we are confused, or anguished, when our world is falling apart?"
Key Quotes:
I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineer in geology and became a building contractor. Even So, readers shouldn't conclude from my telling the story now that it is over, that I've put it all behind me. The more I remember, the deeper I fall into it. Perhaps you, too, will follow, lured by the enigma of father and sons.
Their search for lost fathers had cast both Oedipus and Sohrab far from the cities and the lands to which they belonged, into places where, vulnerable to exploitation by their countries' foes, they ended up traitors. In both stories, loyalty to family, to king, to father, and to dynasty is placed above loyalty to nation, and the protagonists' treasonous predicaments are never emphasized.
The name of this 1949 memoir was taken from the English poet John Donne’s poem of the same title: “Death Be Not Proud.” In it the author and father John Gunther recounts the life and death of his son who passed after a struggle with a malignant brain tumor. Much as Donne pushes back against death’s supposed power, so does Gunther as he celebrates the vitality and beauty of his son Johnny’s life saying that the book’s purpose was for him “to write, as a mournful tribute not only to Johnny but to the power, the wealth, the unconquerable beauty of the human spirit, will, and soul.” The book’s power comes from the author’s keen power of observation coupled with a very measured, controlled level of sentimentality. A good example comes in retrospect as Gunther considers what it means that Johnny is gone: “All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch.” 
by Nicoloas Bouvier.
by Beatrix Beck
I
Early on Gawande captures the decision that we will all make (ideally) before we grow old: “how to make life worth living when we’re weak and frail and can’t fend for ourselves anymore.” More specifically, he seeks to find out “how [can] people age without having to choose between neglect and institutionalization?” Notably, he acknowledges that the challenge to answering these questions is largely a structural one: “How can we build a health care system that will actually help people achieve what’s most important to them at the end of their lives” instead of the current medical status quo and culture that is is built on chasing the long shot--the “medical equivalent of lottery tickets”--on treatments that likely won’t work but near nothing on preparing the patients for the certainty that the treatments won’t work. Most frightening is his conclusion that for the majority of the medical community “hope is not a plan, but it is our plan.”
