Walking on the Ceiling: A Novel

An extraordinary, poignant, meticulously written book about fragility, truth, memory, and grief.

Written in a style that moves across geography and time in short chapters weaving a picture of someone who is unable or unwilling to completely bare her true self and in the process tells us more than she realizes. The descriptions of the physical settings will mean little to anyone who hasn’t visited Paris or Istanbul but they, like her relationships, are an integral part of the story, one where the kernel of truth about the protagonist is always seen indirectly, from an angle. Can anyone fully believe the stories we tell about ourselves, or to ourselves?

dang it, i really wanted to like this book. it started out so promising. but life is short and lately i've been giving myself permission to not finish a book if 1/2way through it i am restless. i didn't get a sense of progression (or regression). mostly a sense of stagnation. and that in itself can be the subject of a good book, but in this case, i felt that we were continually exposed the same dull pool of distilled water. the price was right on the book, the cover and texture of the book were beautiful. the introspection never allowed this reader a point of entry. sigh. i hate when i can't give a book 5 stars.

I was so pleasantly surprised when I began to read this novel, a first book yet, and when I finished it, I was in awe of this author’s spectacular prose and microscopic attention to the inner workings of her protagonist. Still, I can understand why other readers might not get its point or might get it in different ways from mine. To begin with, one has to have the feel and emotionality of the two cities, Istanbul and Paris. I am lucky that I was privileged enough to have lived in or visited both cities and thus, to be able to relate to the main character Nunu’s feelings about them. Nunu is a young woman who is writing this story from Istanbul, her home town. Earlier, she has gone to school abroad in London and then to Paris for a course which she didn’t attend. Her recollections are mostly about the time she walks around in the city of Paris with another author, a much older man, she calls M. She has read M.’s books but she doesn’t let him in on it. One of M.’s books is about Istanbul and he possibly befriends Nunu for the stories she tells him from her point of view. Inside the story, there are sections about the time when she lived with a boyfriend, Luke, in London. Mostly though, her recollections go back and forth between Istanbul and Paris and her different ways of looking at incidents in both cities. Through it all, she makes lists, reflects, and pieces together her memories with the hope of understanding herself and the world better. Although Nunu’s telling her story may sound like melancholic ruminations to some readers and others may think this story has no plot, I don’t agree with both assessments. Nunu’s reflections, recollections, and the sorting of her feelings have a serious flow and a beginning and an end, especially when it comes to her relationship with her mother and M, and the cities of Paris and Istanbul. As a character, Nunu not only aims at being understood but also, she wants to understand herself with her many sides that probably found their origins from the effects of Istanbul as a city and a childhood tragedy that affected her and her relationships. Through the telling of her story, Nunu (short for Nurunisa) reaches into her own shadow to find her own true domain, each time finding another version of herself or another version of her angst. Although the author’s handling of this non-linear storytelling may sound fragmented, it is also a fresh approach, letting each memory carry a new brilliance of a creative impulse. The story is sensitive but not sappy, and through the reading of the book, I found myself contemplating on serious issues that the story touches on. This is a true literary undertaking, and I’ll certainly expect other books of high caliber from this author. In short, this is probably the best book I’ve read in a long time.

This short novel reflects on cities, relationships, and writing, through a series of walks. The walks take place in two cities: Paris, where a young Turkish woman named Nunu walks and talks with an older man, M., a British writer whose books are set in Turkey; and Istanbul, where Nunu grew up taking walks with her mother, especially on Sundays, when they habitually went to lunch. Like her mother, it seems, Nunu “gets antsy if she stays in one place” (84). Other walks take place in more private spaces: the narrator’s father walks the length of their train-like apartment in Istanbul, to the balcony on the other side of the marital bedroom, reciting the letters of his daughter’s full name, NURUNISA; and she herself walks telepathically in the “white city” on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom--a place she escapes to “when Istanbul was heavy and dark, pressing in against the walls of our apartment” (203). The narrator makes clear that the stories she narrates may be unreliable and incomplete: “But stories are reckless things, blind to everything but their own shape. When you tell a story, you set out to leave so much behind” (2). Besides recounting walks, the novel records lists and inventories: of fish and flowers, Turkish dishes, restaurants in Paris and Istanbul, and favorite items. The descriptions of walks, the lists, the fragmented memories of relatives and friends may appear as “a sign of sorrow, a wish to care for and preserve things on the brink of disappearance” (125). --Or perhaps they mark no more than a “residue of absence”(151). Much of what takes place in this novel is mundane, yet oddly profound. It recounts the dislocations that occur as people’s worlds slide past each other like tectonic plates. Istanbul, too, seems fractured from its ancient past. But shared stories, like those between Nunu and the writer, momentarily ease such dislocations. “We passed our stories back and forth until they merged…At that time, brief though it was, we shared a single imagination” (207). In reading and reflecting on this book, I found myself privileged to share in this single imagination. - Author of Pachacuti: World Overturned

Boring.

The writing was beautiful but there wasn’t any plot to follow. It was a nice and easy read and great lines but without a plot it was hard for me to get into it

I've started the novel but the existential drone so far is prone to bore one to death. I wonder if anything will excite this woman...but I think not. It's as if she's on some kind of medication to take any color or enjoyment out of life, sounds likes it's written from inside a coffin. I'll report if anything improved but I doubt it.

Great first book by this author.