Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegul Savas: book review

Walking on the Ceiling (2019) is set in set in Paris in France, and Istanbul in Turkey.

After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to Paris to study literature. She meets an older British writer, M, outside a bookstore. He had written about Istanbul.

They form a friendship and walk the Parisian streets regularly, talking about his novels. They talk about the rapidly changing city of Istanbul. She opens up about her mother’s and father’s death. M seeks more and more of her memories, as if he is a collector of other people’s past lives. Does she talk too much about herself, her past, her home city?

Then M announces that he has started a new novel – another tale about Turkey.

The author is recalling M after a few years. She has one photograph of him. She feels the need to write about the friendship ‘to keep something of this time intact.’

This a gentle time in Nunu’s brief life in Paris as the gains comfort in other people’s words and then confidence in writing her own.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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