There Are Rivers in the Sky

July 1, 2024
Three characters separated by geography and time are united by a single raindrop. In her latest novel, Shafak presents readers with an ambitious, century-spanning saga that revolves around three distinct characters hailing from different parts of the world and different time periods. There's Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has fled her marriage to live in a houseboat on the Thames in 2018; Narin, a young girl who lives along the Tigris in Turkey in 2014, where she is gradually going deaf; and Arthur, a brilliant young boy born into extreme poverty in mid-19th-century London. Zaleekhah, Narin, and Arthur are united by a literary device that often feels overly precious: a single raindrop that, through a repeated cycle of condensation, falling, freezing, and/or thawing, reappears throughout time to interact with or afflict each character. Shafak's attempts to personify the raindrop, which is described as "small and terrified...not dar[ing] to move," fall flat. As a whole, the novel is engaging, with a propulsive narrative and an appealing storytelling voice, but Shafak is overly reliant on certain stylistic mannerisms, such as long lists of descriptions or actions that, stacked one upon the other, quickly grow tiresome, as in this description of Victorian England: "Spent grain from breweries, pulp from paper mills, offal from slaughterhouses, shavings from tanneries, effluent from distilleries...and discharge from flush toilets...all empty into the Thames...." Worse is Shafak's tendency to overwrite and to pursue a self-consciously baroque narrative style (lots of betwixts and whilsts), which occasionally results in convoluted or overly intricate phrases. "Did not our readings of poetry leave unforgettable memories?" one character asks early on. Less, as it turns out, sometimes does count for more. An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.

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Starred review from July 1, 2024
A raindrop, part of water's ""eternal cycle,"" connects lives across time and space in the latest imaginative, compassionate, and transporting novel of recovered history by globally acclaimed, frequently imperiled Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees, 2021). In Mesopotamia, on the River Tigris, cruel King Ashurbanipal is immensely proud of his library, especially the rare lapis lazuli tablet containing the Epic of Gilgamesh. In London in 1840, the raindrop that falls on Ashurbanipal is a snowflake when it lands on a baby born beside the polluted Thames and wryly named King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. A spectacularly magnetic character, Arthur possesses an extraordinary memory and a scholarly disposition and, against all odds, ends up at the British Museum, enthralled by Mesopotamian antiquities, including cuneiform tablets. Shafak glides between Victorian London and a Yazidi village on the River Tigris in Arthur's time and ours. In both eras, the Yazidis face hate and terror. In the present, hydrologist Zaleekhah has moved into a houseboat on the Thames, and once again the blue tablet resurfaces, linking her with Arthur and Narin, a young Yazidi girl captured by ISIS. In this captivating and provocative saga, Shafak presents a beautifully braided plot, entrancing settings, and soulful characters while dramatizing the complex power of stories, the wonders of water, and the terrible paradoxes of humankind.

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Starred review from July 1, 2024

In her new novel, Turkish-British Booker Prize finalist Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees) uses a single raindrop to link together four characters, a thousand years, and several countries. The raindrop first lands on the head of Ashurbanipal, the ruthless Assyrian king who owns the extensive library that includes the epic poem Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, the raindrop, now a snowflake, falls on Arthur, the son of an impoverished river scavenger. Arthur, who is based on real-life Assyriologist George Smith, eventually decodes the clay tablets containing Gilgamesh. In modern-day Turkey, the raindrop, collected as rainwater, spills on Narin, a young Yazidi girl who lives on the banks of the Tigris, where she contends with her gradual hearing loss and religious persecution. In the form of a teardrop, the raindrop then settles upon Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who recently left her husband and lives on a houseboat in contemporary London. Shafak connects these characters through their love of Gilgamesh, Assyrian culture, archeology, and rivers. VERDICT Drawing on historical events, Shafak vividly narrates the theft of artifacts, war, colonialism, environmental crises, and genocide. From her extensive research, she raises critical questions about one's connection to and responsibility for the past in this highly readable and engrossing novel.--Jacqueline Snider

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