Staff Pick
Walking on the Ceiling is a beguiling novel about memories — how tricky they are and how they can affect one's perception — and loss. It's also a book about the fragility of relationships. Aysegul Savas's haunting and powerful debut is a treat not to be missed. Recommended By Sheila N., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past — her country’s and her own — and her complicated relationship with the famous British writer who longs for her memories.
A young woman named Nunu moves to Paris to start over, leaving behind her childhood home in Istanbul and the aftermath of her mother’s death. She knows no one in the city; she longs for connection.
One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night, developing an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family and her home. She also begins to confront her past relationships, her mother’s silence and anger, her father’s death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, as does Nunu’s fear of revealing too much to M., of giving too much of herself away.
An unguarded glimpse of a young woman’s coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about the complexities of memory, storytelling, and the places, real and imagined, we can’t escape.
Review
“[T]he kind of novel that stuns you in a way both quiet and surprising, launching you into reveries of your own.” Nylon Magazine
Review
“Savaş’ quiet and emotionally rich novel is a tender portrait of a young woman exploring her identity and coming to terms with her personal history” Booklist
Review
“Ayşegül Savaş is an enormous new talent who writes with the rigor of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald. Walking on the Ceiling holds the immediacy of youth and the depth of long-earned wisdom at once. Its elegant voice is sure to summon old memories and longings from each reader, relighting them anew.” Catherine Lacey, author of The Answers
Review
“In Walking on the Ceiling, Aysegul Savas investigates the inability of any story to accurately evoke lived experience — yet her unconventional narrative succeeds in doing just that. Savas’s celebration of the minutest details of Paris and Istanbul is juxtaposed, to devastating effect, against rising political tensions. This quietly intense debut is the product of a wise and probing mind.” Helen Phillips, author of The Need and The Beautiful Bureaucrat
Review
“Walking on the Ceiling is an elegant meditation on grief, identity, memory and homecoming. Moving between Paris and Istanbul, the novel captures the tangle of narrative around history, both personal and collective. I fell in love with this book.” Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation
Review
“Sensual, fragile, scented with hope and loss, Walking on the Ceiling is a powerful debut and Ayşegül Savaş is an extremely talented rising star.” Dorthe Nors, author of Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
About the Author
Ayşegül Savaş grew up in Turkey and Denmark. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere, and was shortlisted for the Glimmer Train Fiction Prize and the Graywolf Emerging Writers Award. She has an MFA from the University of San Francisco. She teaches at the Sorbonne and lives in Paris.