The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

The reverberations of this strange 728 page novel are amazing. While the story is simple, the telling of it has the reader wondering what is love, what is happiness, where does sanity lie, how do things (i.e. physical objects) relate to our emotions. The first person narrator is establishing a museum to honor the love of his life, and much of the book is about his deep love for her and the excruciating pain he felt when she refused to see him. After she has married another man, our hero worms his way back into her life and spends years observing her and loving her from within the role of family friend. The story takes place in Istanbul starting in 1975, and while the country is modernizing, there is still an attitude of protectiveness towards women that restrains them.