The Architect's Apprentice

A weak effort by Shafak standards, sadly. It won me at the start with the compelling relationship between the boy and the elephant, but then it became a very plotless affair going from event to event, reading more like a collection of vignettes with a vague overreaching plot than a real novel.

There's some other silliness in here... The protagonist keeps confronting people who then monologue about their motivations, he keeps being miraculously saved by the same people along with other coincidences, and many of the relationships in this book feel very unbelievable.

Two stars for the prose, which is as great as Shafak has always been. But this was a very disappointing book.