An immersive experience

Istanbul Archaeological Museum

This morning, Deb Nance blogged about Zoom, Zoom, and More Zoom on Readerbuzz.  She "Zoomed" with her book club and for other meetings, had conversations "from afar" with friends, and put on mask and gloves to pick up books at the library.  That part of her post ended with "That's my week."  Sounds like the kind of week I've had.  In the next section, Deb says:

"I read a book last week.  It was an immersive experience."

I'm reading a novel now and making it an immersive experience in a different kind of way.  Yesterday, I posted that I've immersed myself in the story of The Girl in the Tree by Şebnem İşigüzel by googling the park in Istanbul where it's set and "looking around" the area.  One of the things I noticed was the Istanbul Archaeological Museum on the east.  Imagine my surprise when I read just a couple of pages into the novel:

"I know Gülhane Park well because for years my father worked at the Archaeology Museum, which is right behind it" (p. 3).

No way!  I'd just seen that museum on the map!  If I hadn't been so caught up in the location of the story, though, I might have quit reading in the first chapter.  The girl who climbed into a tree to stay narrates her own story.  She's snarky, uses offensive words simply to shock, and seems to be totally immersed in the life and music of Amy Winehouse (1983-2011).  I looked up that information because she keeps referring to "the day Amy died," which (I learned online) was July 23, 2011.  The narrator was thirteen when Amy died, but is now seventeen.

At the beginning of Chapter 2, the girl's aunt is playing Amy's "Back to Black" music.  So I looked it up and found the lyrics.

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to black

Not my kind of music, not my kind of lyrics — nope, not posting all of the words here.  I did listen to Amy sing it, in order to immerse myself in the narrative — but once is enough.  The YouTube video shows Amy wearing black while burying someone and "saying goodbye" at a cemetery — and the video bleeps out the crude words I won't put on my blog.

I don't get any connection, but maybe I'll see how it fits the story as I keep reading.  Okay, back to her tree, back to reading.  I may be self-isolating at home with my cat, but I'm really in Istanbul, without the risk of flying across an ocean during a pandemic with a crowded cabin full of people in order to see Istanbul in person.