The Towers of Trebizond

The title of this book by Rose Macaulay is incredibly familiar to me as one of those classics that everyone should read; and yet it turned out to be nothing like I expected, and the sort of book that I can’t see lasting into the future. It’s ostensibly a comedy about a woman who accompanies her elderly aunt Dot into Turkey, is separated when Dot goes to visit (communist) Russia, and returns to England with Dot’s camel and her own ape to await her return. What it’s actually about is religion; the narrator, like the author, is in a long-standing affair and cannot see a way out of it, is an agnostic and can’t see a way into the Anglicanism of her ancestors, and struggles with both things constantly. The end is both tragic and unexpected, and in a way unresolved. It’s a very interesting – and well written, in a very Cold Comfort Farm voice – story, especially for lovers of Turkey, comedy, and travel stories in general, but it’s a story of its time, and I can’t see it lasting as a classic into this century.