Red Dress in Black and White

the lights come on in the city. Below them the waters of the Bosphorus, cold and pulling, turn from green-blue to just black. The boat lights, the bridge lights, the black-white contrast of the skyline reflecting off the water would come to remind the boy of Peter and, as his mother termed it, his art.
 
After paying the fare, his mother takes him by the hand, dragging him along as they shoulder through the evening foot traffic trying to find their way. Despite the darkness eternal day lingers along the stiklal, flightless pigeons hobble along the neon-lit boulevard, chestnuts smolder from the red-painted pushcarts on the street corners, the doughy smell of baked açma and simit hangs in the air. The stiklal is cobblestone, she has worn heels for the occasion, and when she catches one in the grouting and stumbles into the crowd, she knocks a shopping bag out of another woman s hand. Standing from her knees, William s mother repeatedly apologizes and a few men reach under her arms to help her up, but her son quickly waves them away and helps his mother up himself. After that the two of them walk more slowly and she still holds his arm, but now she isn t dragging her son, and when the boy feels her lose balance once more, he grabs her tightly at the elbow and with the help of his steady grip she manages to keep on her feet.
 
They turn down a quiet side street, which aside from a few shuttered kiosks has little to recommend it. The apartment building they come to isn t much wider than its door. After they press the buzzer, a window opens several floors above. A man ducks his head into the bracing night and calls down to them in a high-pitched yet forceful voice, like air through a steel pinhole. He then blows them an invisible kiss, launching it off an open palm. William s

plotted.   Kirkus Reviews
 
Red Dress in Black and White asks thought-provoking questions about the place of power both in love and in politics. For those who witnessed it, it is impossible to forget Gezi; same goes for this book.   Özgür Mumcu, columnist for Cumhuriyet and best-selling author of Peace Machine

Remarkable . . . Mesmerizing . . . The story may be a tragedy, but reads like a finely layered mystery . . . At the end is the sort of revelatory surprise reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan s film The Sixth Sense . . . The more I contemplate this work, the more I get the sense that I could spend a year unpacking its intricacies and still not be finished . . . If his newest offering is indicative of what is to come, we have, in Ackerman, an emerging master of the form.   John R. Coats, Consequence Magazine

Formidable . . . Ackerman precisely traverses a labyrinth of privilege, manipulation, complicity, crisis, to offer readers a crucial, immersive novel of indelible resonance. Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness (starred)

Ackerman has long since established himself as the warrior-poet of modern American interventionism. He is a master of painfully intimate portraits of despair, and his words have the authority, and often the weariness, of lived experience . . . Ackerman weaves his tale together gradually, layering in the revealing details, tightening the screws to press against the fragility of each character s tenuous circumstance . . . His intimate knowledge [of Istanbul] shines through, making that schizophrenic city with one foot in Europe, the other in Asia one of the most compelling portraits the author paints.   Jennifer Bort Yacovissi, Washington Independent Review of Books

The complications of parenthood make for rich novelistic themes. Elliot Ackerman mines them judiciously in his new novel . . . The novel s sections alternate kaleidoscopically between past and present, with prose that is spare and vivid . . . Kristin s personal motives are masterfully revealed in the end, lending her a depth that a mere CIA operative would otherwise lack. Eve Ottenberg, Washington City Paper
 
Tim O Brien and Elliot Ackerman are connected as great writers whose writing has been influenced by their time in fields of fire . . . What elevates Red Dress in Black and White is Ackerman s writing. Drew Gallagher, Fredericksburg Freelance-Star