Amidst a stream of surreal disclosures from a woman grappling with mental illness and electroshock therapy, bursts of beauty in the prose.
“I want to wander down these streets and avenues, drinking everything I see, making new discoveries, watching these people who remain strangers to me, all around me, this unquenchable life that I so long to take into my heart. Could it be that there are others who find whole worlds in a single moment, who marvel in the miracle of existence, whose thoughts can purge into the depths of unfettered time and rapture? I don’t know. A single moment can hold an eternity.”
But it is ultimately a sad and disturbing portrait of a particular societal context and its effect on the psyche, framed affectionately by Aysegul Savas’ introduction and Maureen Freely’s translator’s note.
Reading this brought to mind Leonora Carrington’s Down Below, and reading this reminded me that sometimes the point of literature is not to read only about women’s lives that appeal to the reader, but to have one’s eyes opened to different kinds of suffering if only to achieve a better understanding of the world we live in.
It’s a book I can only recommend to a select few, but I know the Turkish section of my shelf is richer for compassionately clasping it to its bosom.
The Book-Butterfly 
The title alone is foreboding enough!!!
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Which is sad because she writes so beautifully! I’m planning to read another book of hers soon, and I’m hoping it won’t be disturbing like this one. I’ll let you know. ❤
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