Rating: 
Summary: So glad this is back in print
Review: A deceptive novel which has a lot more to say than appears on the surface. The opening sentence is a pure joy and sets the tone for the arch and very wry humour:" Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." Often dubbed a "classic", it made me wonder what is the definition of a classic? For me it is something which continues to hold truths even beyond the context of its specific setting and time. Jane Austen and Shakespeare, for example continue to astound because you can't help wondering "How did they know THAT when something seems particularly apt to the 21st century human condition. There is a lot in this book that fits that definition. Many of the observations contained within stand true some 50 years later. The idea of people writing their "Turkey books" is amusing and the humour droll. One need only think of the recent "running away to southern France / Spain / Tuscany" genre. The musings on the place of spirituality in various manifestations, and the intersection between pragmatism and organised religion is interesting. I am taken by the fact that we never know the narrator's gender. The name "Laurie" can be either male or female, particularly in the English context (eg author Laurie Lee was male; ).The "illicit" relationship could almost equally be a homosexual relationship. The behaviour of the narrator provides certain clues, such as riding the camel and offering lifts to Turkish country men. I doubt whether that would have been at all possible for a lone travelling female. On the other hand, the narrator talks at one point about a non-possible future with his/her lover (definitely a male) and "their children". Of course the lover has children within his marriage, and the narrator may have expected to marry and have children. Male homosexuals commonly did (and still do) just that. In other passages, the narrator drinks alone with another male companion in a bar, not something which could even necessarily be accommodated in 1950s Turkey for male and female acquaintances. Not everyone is going to like this book or engage with the themes, but if you enjoy well-written descriptions, musings on the human condition which are effused with wry irony, then give it a go!
Rating:
Summary: So glad this is back in print
Review: A deceptive novel which has a lot more to say than appears on the surface. The opening sentence is a pure joy and sets the tone for the arch and very wry humour: " Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." Often dubbed a "classic", it made me wonder what is the definition of a classic? For me it is something which continues to hold truths even beyond the context of its specific setting and time. Jane Austen and Shakespeare, for example continue to astound because you can't help wondering "How did they know THAT when something seems particularly apt to the 21st century human condition. There is a lot in this book that fits that definition. Many of the observations contained within stand true some 50 years later. The idea of people writing their "Turkey books" is amusing and the humour droll. One need only think of the recent "running away to southern France / Spain / Tuscany" genre. The musings on the place of spirituality in various manifestations, and the intersection between pragmatism and organised religion is interesting. I am taken by the fact that we never know the narrator's gender. The name "Laurie" can be either male or female, particularly in the English context (eg author Laurie Lee was male; ).The "illicit" relationship could almost equally be a homosexual relationship. The behaviour of the narrator provides certain clues, such as riding the camel and offering lifts to Turkish country men. I doubt whether that would have been at all possible for a lone travelling female. On the other hand, the narrator talks at one point about a non-possible future with his/her lover (definitely a male) and "their children". Of course the lover has children within his marriage, and the narrator may have expected to marry and have children. Male homosexuals commonly did (and still do) just that. In other passages, the narrator drinks alone with another male companion in a bar, not something which could even necessarily be accommodated in 1950s Turkey for male and female acquaintances. Not everyone is going to like this book or engage with the themes, but if you enjoy well-written descriptions, musings on the human condition which are effused with wry irony, then give it a go!
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites!
Review: An important book: this is Macaulay's last novel and one in which she reveals more of her own life, usually kept very private and guarded. Like the narrator, Macaulay carried on an affair with a married man for many years. At the time she wrote this book, she had returned to the Church of England; she herself, like Laurie (the narrator) in the novel, is inclined to the Catholic expression of that tradition. This book is a wonder: part travelogue, part comedy, it is also, remarkably, a serious commentary on faith and doubt. It deals with the difficulties, both moral and intellectual, entailed in being a Christian in today's modern world, with both church and society being what they are. This book, then, will both entertain you and make you think. For students of the English theologian Austin Farrer, I'd say that Laurie's situation in this book is an effective representation of what Farrer means by "initial faith": attracted but still divided, not ready to give full commitment to what the church stands for.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites!
Review: An important book: this is Macaulay's last novel and one in which she reveals more of her own life, usually kept very private and guarded. Like the narrator, Macaulay carried on an affair with a married man for many years. At the time she wrote this book, she had returned to the Church of England; she herself, like Laurie (the narrator) in the novel, is inclined to the Catholic expression of that tradition. This book is a wonder: part travelogue, part comedy, it is also, remarkably, a serious commentary on faith and doubt. It deals with the difficulties, both moral and intellectual, entailed in being a Christian in today's modern world, with both church and society being what they are. This book, then, will both entertain you and make you think. For students of the English theologian Austin Farrer, I'd say that Laurie's situation in this book is an effective representation of what Farrer means by "initial faith": attracted but still divided, not ready to give full commitment to what the church stands for.
Rating: 
Summary: ...if Wodehouse was a deep thinker...
Review: He might have written in the style of Rose MacAulay. Like Wodehouse, MacAuly's character has an eccentric aunt, and unlike wodehouse, owns a camel and is on a mission to bring Anglicanism to Turkish women (as implausible as it sounds).
MacAulay weaves between lyrical, humorous, philsophical and plain old top notch travel writing into a delightful story. Was sorry to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Multi-layered
Review: I picked up "Towers of Trebizond" mainly because of the title, as I am an avid reader of literature and travel writing on Turley. Macaulay's books seems simple and a good laugh at the first read, but is a book with many layers of meaning. Even the genre of the book is hard to define. On first look it is just a novel, on the second look, it's similar to a travelogue and is no doubt written based on the author's personal experiences. On the third level, it's a dissertation on religion and morality. Through recounting the travels of a group of English missionaries in Turkey, Macaulay brings out the importance of the differences between the East and West, in religion and culture, and also how one sticks to one's impression of the unknown (in this case, Russia) though one has no actual experience or encounter in this regard. The book is illuminating in its discussion of relationships, love, betrayal, friendship, religion and morality and it's ultimately about lives and the choices we make in them. What's right or wrong is not absolute and instead is relative to the environment one lives in. Through the beguiling humour of her characters, Macaulay is able to discuss important issues we confront in our lives without taking sides or being judgemental and leaves us to make our own conclusion about what we value and deem important.
Rating:
Summary: Return of an old favorite
Review: It's always good to see an old favorite returned to print after many years. This always helps a new generation of readers to enjoy some writing that interested their previous generation. This book is touted as a very funny work, but I didn't think that it was all that humorous, at least to my mind. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the book, because I did, very much. The characters were well-drawn, and the travelogue portion of the work was first-rate. I thought of the book as more of a meditation on religion and its meaning to various people in the story, and I just loved the word pictures that the author painted on almost every page! Humor is in the mind of the beholder, and some of the book was indeed humorous; not in a laugh out loud vein, but rather in a quiet chuckling way. The work shows its age a bit, being almost 50 years old, but that doesn't make any diference in the story line. This is a good book to read, whatever your reason, and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A tender, hilarious and obnoxious.
Review: More than 20 years ago I first read this book.. I found it in the library in my home town, Utrecht, The Netherlands. The first sentence: "'Take my camel dear', said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass", captivated me, and I couldn't stop reading. They had to send me home (with the book) when the library closed, several hours later. I read the book several times then. I tried to find it in the bookshops, but it seemed not to be avalilable. I got it from the library again and made a cover-to-cover photocopy. Later on I lost the photocopy (my first wife insisted that she kept it when we divorced). So when, on a visit to Cincinnati, I finally found it again in one of the bookstores, I was the happiest person in the world.
It is a magnificent book. It tells the story of a British (it is a very British book) woman, probably around 35 years old, traveling in Turkey, and Syria and Lebanon, with her aunt and a clergyman. It is as ironic as the British can be, and it gives some profound insights into the crooked world of Anglican High Church clergy. But it also is a book about love, and about the struggle when a woman who is religious in principle, falls into illegitimate love with a married man. It's a book about the choices we have in life (two of the characters choose to vanish into the Soviet Union, which must have been a brave thing to write about in England in the fifties). It is also one of the most tender books that I know: there are no villains in this book, just loved ones that are slichtly off the tracks.
Also, it portrais the protagonist as a writer/illustrator of travel books, which makes us realize that the book is about Rose MacAulay: a well-known writer of travel books about the Middle East. The way she describes the other writers-of-travel-books that roam the area is hilariously obnoxious (it's the only book I know that has somebody eaten by a shark in the Black Sea).
Having read the book, which you SHOULD, you will want to know about the author. I can recommend the short introduction in 'The world my wilderness', which has recently become available again as a Virago Modern Classic. There you can read about some of the real life things that found their way into 'The towers of Trebizond'. With this information the book became even more dear to me. But only read this introduction after you have read the book itself!
By the way, 'The world my wilderness' is almost as captivating and tender and non-conventional as 'The towers of Trebizond', be it slightly less accessible.
Rating:
Summary: unremarked androgyny
Review: One of the strangest aspect of this excellent book is that the sex of the narrator is left undefined. Most people (including the blurb writer on my edition) assume that Laurie is female, but there is no clear evidence for this; and indeed the adventures described -- in remote rural Turkey in the 1950s -- would be remarkably intrepid for an unaccompanied female. But nowhere is this commented on. Not only that, but Laurie's lover, Vere, while presumably being male, is never explicitly referred to as such and the author goes to some lengths to avoid using gender specific pronouns. Which raises the question, whether the "sin" which Laurie is in, and which excludes him/her from the Church, is more serious than heterosexual adultery.
Rating:
Summary: Magical, funny, learned, expansive, unique
Review: Rose Macaulay's TOWERS OF TREBIZOND is unlike any other novel ever written. Basically a kind of travelogue of the narrator's travels through the Levant with her eccentric Aunt Dot, the smug Anglican Reverend Chantry-Pigg, and Aunt Dot's crazy camel (an important character in its own right), the novel comes to encompass much more: a meditation on East and West, a study of the contrasts between diffeerent forms of religion, and a very searching analysis of the need for religion in human experience. It's the kind of book you don't want to end, and even when it becomes somewhat wild and unbelievably allegorical (such as when the narrator trains an ape she acquires in Turkey to drive a car late in the work) you stay with it. It's the kind of book you can dip in again and again throughout your life: it works as well in bits and epigrams as it does as a sustained narrative.
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