Unsympathetic characters

I found myself unable to care what happened to any of these characters. In particular the sisters. One is just outright obnoxious, more interested in pretty much everything other than protecting her son. The other is unable to love her own daughter because when she was growing up her younger sister was slightly taller and therefore her jealousy from childhood has left her emotionally stunted. The narration lacked emotion. The random rape in the train carriage, really, was that necessary???

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Great Book

Loved this book, the accents were so perfect I could listen to the story without stopping.

Lovely story. I would recommend it to anyone.

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2 people found this helpful

An enjoyable love story during WWII

I enjoyed the storyline & the narrator was excellent. At one point I felt the story was predicable. But OT was still an enjoyable journey with the families from France to Turkey.

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masterpiece

a truly moving story of human spirit and hope for the future I was truly moved by this story

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Interesting and captivating

The stories of the characters' lives are set against historic reference with skill. A captivating tale of humanity and diplomacy.

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step into history

an interesting story that has made me keen to learn about the history of turkey and the involvement in ww2

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Bit of a plod...

It takes a while to get going, and the writing style is a bit choppy in places, but that could be down to translation.
I never really connected with any of the characters, some because I didn't particularly like them and others because they seemed to be randomly introduced to the story and never developed into anything that was really relevant?
Certain elements seemed unnecessary - Sabiha, her daughter, and the psychoanalyst - what was the point? The rape on the train, why, the train journey was harrowing enough and the story never followed through on it anyway. I felt the train journey was a very significant part of the story, yet it was crammed in at the end of the book and left a lot of loose ends.
However, as a historical fiction book it was quite interesting and did give some insight into the plight of the Turkish people during the war.

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Somewhat flat rendering

The last train to Istanbul is based on the historic fact of many Jews finding refuge via the stance that Turkey took during World War 2. The story is very much focused on individual lives somewhat flatly recounted. Some
Details are irrelevant (such
As Sabiha and her husband’s relationship and eventual making up, the role of the psychologist, David’s role seems to
Be there purely to make the point of the conditions in the concentration camps but there was no other connection between him and other passengers.

My main issue was however the mundane uninteresting language of the story, it felt flat . I realise it may have Ben the translation….

A fairly ordinary read.

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Didn't get interesting until two thirds in

Any additional comments?

It seemed to drag on and was quite boring for most of it. I liked the story though but it seemed Selwa was a bit irritating.

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