There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak - 2*

[Algernon (Darth Anyan)]

... if we could only see the world through a baby’s eyes, gazing up with innocent wonder, we could watch the rivers in the sky. Mighty rivers that never cease to flow.

Good intentions, solid and extensive research, a vivid imagination and emotionally powerful themes should translate into a bestseller. The number of fans and the high ratings prove that whatever Shafak has to say resonates strongly with most readers. The problem then is mine, my inability to set my scientific mind aside and look through my ‘baby’s eyes’.

There are three major intertwined timelines: Victorian London and early archaeological digs at the Ninive site account for about three thirds of the book. A young boy named Arthur who is born in the slums and becomes the best translator of cuneiforms for the British Museum because of his supernatural memory and his genius level mathematical skills is our guide through this period. Modern London is described through the eyes of Zaleekhah, a Yazidi expatriate and scientific researcher of water conservation. Narin, a young Yazidi girl living on the banks of the river Tigris, who is going deaf but listens avidly to the stories told by her grandmother, completes the trio of POV characters, if you ignore the cover story of the drop of water that travels through history registering everything it witnesses.[see the appendix at the end of the book]

I was interested in the discussion about the epic of Gilgamesh, one of my first ever reads, and in the culture of the Yazidi people, but I couldn't get over the liberties the author takes with the source material, like the perfect memory of the boy who remembers his own birth and the portrait of the guy who invented the concept of water memory as a victim of the system and not the hack he was proven to be.

One of the real talents of Elif Shafak is to write beautiful, catchy phrases to describe her passion for her object of study. I have chosen to end my review with a couple of these quotes, as a sign of respect for all those readers who gave her a five star ovation.

“Cousins, friends, books, songs, poems, trees – anything that brings meaning into our lives counts.”

“Broken and bruised and beautiful and sad and yet surprisingly resilient and profoundly inspiring. That is what it means to me, Ancient Mesopotamia.”