This will sweep you away for the summer. Lucy Foley blends a rich history, haunting secrets and a timeless love story’ Santa Montefiore, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Deverill series Best Books Set in the 1920s — from Stories That Shimmer with Champagne and Social Change, to Rip-roaring Reads Covering Crime, Colonialism and Beyond. Her liberation has come at a price. She is a teacher now and a child's guardian, she understands duty and responsibility. What then, when circumstances have her questioning her core values? What would her father have said? Or her little brother, who was forced to fight in his country's war? A sorrowful war changes a country forever- changes its people, can the trauma be reversed? Forgiven? Is there room for love in such a hateful sphere? This is a story of Istanbul/Constantinople in 1921 during the Allied Occupation. A sad, but beautiful ode to the people who claimed it as their own, and those who occupied it after the war. It is about a young teacher who saved one of her Armenian pupils from genocide, took care of her elderly grandmother and mother, and learnt the hard truths of what war really was from all sides. She had to come to terms with some truths that was hard to stomach...and forgive.

Last Letter from Istanbul Quotes by Lucy Foley - Goodreads Last Letter from Istanbul Quotes by Lucy Foley - Goodreads

Occasionally it’s the author’s writing style that sweeps the reader to a particular time and place. Such is the case with Last Letter from Istanbul where Lucy Foley’s lyrical, evocative imaginings of life in 1921 in Istanbul (renamed Constantinople by the hated allied occupiers) whisks the reader to dusty streets, to the peaceful shade of quiet gardens, to a life changed forever by war. Nur is a resourceful young widow who, having been ousted from her life of luxury and still grieving for her beloved brother who is missing in action, now finds herself caring not only for her mother and grandmother, but also for an orphaned Armenian boy. The most precious thing in Nur’s new life is the orphan in her care a boy with a terrible secret. When he falls dangerously ill Nur’s world becomes entwined with the enemy’s. She must return to where she grew up, and plead for help from Medical Officer George Monroe.

Set during the occupation of Istanbul by allied forces after the First World War, Last Letter from Istanbul tells its story from alternating viewpoints. Those of Nur, a local evicted from her family home and now living with her mother and grandmother in a far less desirable district; the young boy who has been taken in by Nur; George, the army doctor, whose hospital occupies Nur’s former home; and two unnamed characters in the Traveller and the Prisoner. It becomes clear who they are as the novel progresses.

Last Letter from Istanbul by Lucy Foley (9780008169107

The house has been transformed into an army hospital, it is a prize of war in the hands of the British. And as Nur weaves through the streets carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, Constantinople swarms with Allied soldiers – a reminder of how far she and her city have fallen.

It’s a time of uncertainty: there are occupation forces on the streets, refugees arriving on a daily basis and everyone’s hustling to survive. Despite that, for Nur it’s also a time of increased freedom: she can go out to work as a teacher, substituting for her brother who went off to war and hasn’t returned, and she no longer needs to wear the veil when leaving the house. But this freedom is new and not without limitations: she sees the disapproving looks as she walks the streets of her city, and knows that she can only push against long-held customs and norms so much.

Last Letter from Istanbul - The Book Trail Last Letter from Istanbul - The Book Trail

The descriptions of the city are raw yet lyrical, the descriptions of war brutal yet brilliantly evocative and detailed. Hard to read in parts due to the obvious reality of it all.Men are are capable of some awful things. The characters, as varied as a small Turkish boy and a Scottish doctor make this a rich tapestry of a historical read. We meet Nur, a young woman living in Constantinople- her beloved Istanbul- a city brutally overtaken by the Allied Forces. She yearns for the life she lost and is reminded daily of the changes: she sees the Allied soldiers laughing and taunting her fellow people. She is surrounded, consumed, by her justified bitterness. She knows the enemy, and judges those who refuse to see the truth, those who have accepted their great losses. But she also knows that in the face of these losses, she has tasted real freedom as well as great inequality. On one of these secret visits Nur is discovered by Dr George Monroe, a medical officer in the British army and to Nur, a sworn enemy. This is not to be their first encounter and as a reader we witness how their tentative but very delicate relationship develops over a period of time. It is a slow read and builds up a dramatic picture of war and humanity by the end. I liked the way it was written from the perspective of four people as this story of love amidst a landscape of conflicting cultures and how it tries to survive. This is a slow burn. I found it difficult to get into at first as the chapters are all very short and seem very disjointed. However, as the pace increased the book became a very good read.

It takes a while for these strands to come together, but once they do, the story envelops you. It’s as if one of Nur’s embroidered shawls wraps around you, bundling you into the story alongside her. Lucy Foley brings the sights, smells and sounds of Istanbul to life in her writing and evokes an impression of what it was like to be there at this moment in the city’s history; a period I didn’t know much about before reading. I enjoyed this book despite the slow start. The characters and the setting were brought to life with beautiful writing. This was my first Lucy Foley book but it won't be my last. Nur has been brought up as the cossetted daughter of a wealthy Turkish man. She is more accustomed to reaching for the next fig than struggling to survive as she must do following WW1. Instead of a return to normality the bungling allies carve the map and create years of future harm, in this case by occupying what they rename as Constantinople. Last Letter from Istanbul is a compelling and sweeping tale that crosses decades and takes the reader on a captivating journey through the tumultuous history of a nation that has struggled to maintain an identity, a nation that struggles to find peace. Set in Constantinople in 1921, it tells the tale of a forbidden love between Nur and Medical Officer George Monroe. I started reading this on Sunday afternoon. It’s an easy read and I couldn’t put it down. It’s well written and so descriptive you could almost imagine yourself there tasting the local delicacies or feeling the breeze from the Bosphorus.