Talking trees have been in my head these last few days. They began with a book club discussion on There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, a book with a drop of water sutradhar that connects its interweaving narratives.

Who would you use a sutradhar in your story I wonder aloud? A tree, if trees could talk, they would have so much to tell us, says my friend Natasha.

In There Are Rivers in the Sky, it is water that tells the story. A single drop of water moves from the world of Yazidis in Mesopotamia, who are displaced from their land by a giant bulldozer that is building a dam on the river Tigris, to Arthur, a young David Copperfield-like hero in Dickensian England. Arthur, unlike Copperfield, has no unknown benefactor. With hard work and a love for history, the boy lands himself a job at the British Museum, where he investigates ancient scripts and artefacts plundered by the British. The story vaults across time to follow Zuleika, a rebellious young water scientist based in London. The novel does a great job of connecting these narratives, building to a dramatic ISIS kidnapping and rescue.

In our book discussion, we collectively marvel at the genius of Shafak, this Turkish British writer, who addresses serious and scary issues through interesting characters, each of whom has their feel-good moments.

Shafak seems universally loved, judging by her reader reviews on the reader community Goodreads. Yet I remember feeling underwhelmed when I first read her. Her storytelling felt prettified and trite, her characters vehicles for an activist agenda, her plots force-fitted around a profusion of worthy themes. Lately, I have changed my opinion. I am more forgiving of her unsubtleties and more appreciative of her simple storytelling, her consummate abilities to craft stories around art and literature and her blend of eastern and western storytelling styles. I like that she situates her characters in a world where the East is the accomplished norm and not the exotic other.

Wandering through the walled cities of Samarqand and Bukhara last fortnight, gazing at the mosques and madrasas, another Shafak story swirled around me.

The Architect’s Apprentice begins with the tale of a baby elephant who has been gifted by the Mughal Emperor Humayun to Sultan Suleiman of Turkey. On board the ship that is taking the elephant to Istanbul is a young stowaway called Jahan, who grows to love the elephant dearly. When the ship reaches Istanbul, Jahan is designated the elephant's mahout. He is also a talented designer and soon enough, he catches the eye of the chief architect. Jahan becomes the architect’s apprentice, helping him design and build mosques, contending with the egos of succeeding Sultans, each of whom wants the dome of their mosque to be the highest. The book builds a vivid world of the Ottoman Empire, its palaces and politics, its bazaars and its craftsmen and the rude Europeans constantly knocking on its doors and shores.

In Samarqand, as I listen to the stories of emperors who commissioned these great mosques, I wonder about the architects and craftsmen who built them. I pay special attention to the story of Timur bringing in craftsmen from India and also to the gossipy legend about the love affair between the architect and Bibi Khanum, the chief wife of Timur.

And now, I am thousands of miles away, returning to our family home. The passengers around me are asleep in the darkened bus that travels through the valleys of the Himalayas. Looking out of the window, I see moonlight reflecting off the foamy eddies of the Beas. I imagine the journey of a single drop of water in this river fed by Himalayan glaciers, rather like the raindrop in the Tigris in the novel I have just read.

Shafak’s storytelling has connected worlds for me — a drop of water in the Tigris and Thames rivers, linking with the Beas river and the pine tree by the wayside. It’s helped me see the invisible faces behind centuries-old buildings. I decided to pick up another Shafak novel I abandoned a few years ago — the story of a Sufi poet in Forty Rules of Love. Something tells me I will enjoy this book. This is what I love about the chemistry of books and readers — you reject a book today and then a decade later, you pick up the same book — and this time it speaks to you.

What about you dear Reader — do you have a book you abandoned on a first read and then loved it when you picked it up a second time?

And until next week, happy reading!

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal