Three Daughters of Eve - Elif Shafak

"Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to
a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground--an old Polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past--and a love--Peri had tried desperately to forget."

I have read Shafak's work before, more specifically her much acclaimed Bastard of Istanbul. However, while I was blown away of the Bastard of Istanbul's prose, I was left wanting when it came to plot. Three Daughters of Eve was far better in my personal opinion. This might be because the themes discussed, such as loneliness, religion and finding yourself stuck between cultures where far closer to my heart than the family estrangement depicted in Bastard of Istanbul. 

Three Daughters of Eve is a multi-layered novel that explores the feeling of being caught in between the tensions that plague the modern era - between traditionalism and modernity, between religiosity and secularism, between East and West - and the consequences of being ideologically unmoored in a polarized world. While Three Daughters of Eve succeeds in scaling down these lofty ideas into the ways they shape the everyday life of the protagonist, it also uses the rest of its characters as caricatures of these ideas, turning moments of potentially genuine connection into staged battlegrounds where the clash between dichotomies can play out. While this should have led to the characters feeling one dimensional and unrelatable, through Shafak's beautiful writing, I still related to them despite understanding what they represented on a textual level.  I enjoyed the novel for the author's skill in evoking time and place, and her depiction of the modern existential crisis that went beyond the individual and into society as a whole, while still being deeply personal. I truly related to Peri and her struggles in finding herself. 

I also adored Shafak's prose. She has a certain style that is both poetic and raw, never feeling overly florid. She cuts through human nature and it's condition in short sharp sentences, displaying a dizzying love for both Turkey and England. 

My only negative to this book is that I couldn’t help but feel that, in some places, there were build ups to scenes that were abruptly abandoned. I was also dissatisfied with the rather abrupt ending although I understood the point the author was trying to make. 

Age Rating 15+ Nothing untoward, though there is a mugging and attempted rape at the beginning. 

The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak

"In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her

country’s violent past in a vivid and colourful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its centre is the “bastard” of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlour and is Asya’s mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is a bold, powerful tale."

I really loved the first two third's of this book. The prose is stunning. The descriptions of Istanbul, while sparse, where rich and beautiful. The dialogue was snappy and fun, and there where just some sentences that made me stop and re-read them a few times. 

 

For example, “The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.” and  

“Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced.”

The characters were intriguing and are certainly the driving point of the story: the Aunties, each with their particularity but still had that tolerance and love that made them able to live together. 

Asya, the nihilistic bastard impressed me with her realistic teenage anger that wasn't diminished or written off as childish. I resonated with her refusal to accept the past as part of her, her wish to leave a big blank spot behind and stay in that moment with nothing to be charged for. I related to her deep and instilled anger that seems to radiate from her and her refusal to accept the world as it is.  

On the other hand is Armanoush, living with her ancestor's memories and history tied up to her present, half Armenian half American, deciding to find her roots by taking a trip to Istanbul. The city of her ancestors and their old enemies. She believes that returning there would help her find herself in between her mother's hate for Armenian culture and her father's Armenian origins.

I was surprised by, but really enjoyed the magical realism of this story. Auntie Banu's djinni were a great inclusion and where incredibly important in the plot. 

Now, onto the things that I didn't enjoy. The writing in this one was great, as I said before, but the story felt a little flat for me. It was both too much and too little. There was a lot of extraneous material as it seemed like the author was in love with this Turkish family and wanted to tell us all about them. There could have been more focus on the relationship of the characters, the Armenian genocide and the Turkish nationalisation vs Ottoman state. 

In the last third of the book, it felt like the author has taken a step back from the characters and all of the emotion left the story. It devolved to telling not showing. The great reveal as well was just so contrived and the coincidence was just... no,no. I don't like such contrived story lines that beat you over the head with the moral of the story, it becomes too didactic. The reveal of who was Asya's father, was horrifying. I am not sure why Shafak made that decision and I am not sure I can stand by it. That coupled with Asya's seeming acceptance of it by calling him "Baba" just didn't sit well with me and didn't fit with her character up till now. 

There where also a lot of story-lines left open. What happened with Asya and the Cartoonist? Who was "The Baron" that Armanoush had an online crush on? Where the Kazanci men freed from the curse? Did Banu give Armanoush the brooch? 

Overall worth a read from an introduction into the Armenian/ Turk conflict, beautiful atmosphere, great characters and lovely writing. 

Age Rating 16+. There is a rape scene,incest, mentions of heavy domestic violence, mentions and brief descriptions of genocide. 

The Birds Have Also Gone - Yaşar Kemal

"There is an ancient Turkish tradition that promises the person who

frees a small bird a place in paradise. Three boys set up a business of catching birds to enable people to free them, but city people are now sceptical and tragedy lies in wait for the boys."

Only about 150 pages, this was a short but impactful read. The second of my books set in Istanbul, it gave a brilliant yet ephemeral look into the culture. The writing style and descriptive passages are stunning, even if some of the content was brutal and thought provoking. I was disturbed by the tradition of freeing birds, captured for only this reason, that would then be released by a well meaning if deluded person only to be caught again. Trapped in this horrible cycle of capture and release.  

The characters of the boys are equally as unpin down-able as the rest of the story. They are, like many others in the book, disturbed by the fact people no longer want to buy the birds and partake. They take this failing to signify the moral failings of the modern Istanbul and the lack of faith in it's people. They also seem to feel pity for the many tiny beautiful birds they stuff into cages far to small for them, killing many birds everyday. Whether this pity is real or just a selling tactic though is truly hard to make out. The boys don't seem to understand how horrible their actions are, and put all of the blame for the birds captures and deaths at the door of the people who won't buy the birds freedom. 

This was my first Kemal and it did not disappoint. The book is so many things in one: a celebration of a great city, half reality and more than half myth; a lament for passing traditions and a disappearing way of life; a bewildered exclamation against the ravages of modernity, which has brought in its wake so much grief to so many. 

Above all else, this is an environmental story, and the author marvels at the gifts of nature so prodigiously showered on the Bosphorus, so cruelly treated by ambivalent and blinkered custom. The ending is truly shocking - but could it really have been any other way?

Age Rating 14+. Deeply moving, quite shocking and sad. 

Istanbul: Memories and the City - Orhan Pamuk

"A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or–hüzün–that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving."

Because of my trip to Istanbul, I decided to read 4 books set there to get the vibe of the city I was to be visiting. 

This was the first on my list. It was unfortunately a disappointment. Pamuk spends a lifetime sitting indoors bemoaning an Istanbul which, he says, doesn't exist anymore. How he can remain isolated in a busy city year after year says more about him, his non-Turkish background, wealthier heritage, self-centred habits, etc. than it probably does about Istanbul.

We're left to slog through four hundred pages of angsty ennui which is purport to represent the zeitgeist of a city that mourns the days it stood at the centre of the world and a divided identity, but in fact does little more than chronicle the thin complaints of a wealthy man who never manages to move out of his mother's house. It would be fine if melancholy simply pervaded Pamuk's memoirs as he spun tales of his youth, but there are almost no tales told here, just endless, smothering atmosphere. 

I can't speak, obviously, for the Istanbul of his youth, but the Istanbul I have experienced is far from the black and white melancholy suffused landscape that Pamuk conjured up. Rather than a melancholy of a city, I think Pamuk writes about the melancholy and claustrophobia of a deeply dysfunctional family and his own deep bouts of depression. To layers those feelings and impressions over an entire city feels unfair and awfully self - centred. 

One positive of this book is that it did give me a good idea of where all the different neighbourhoods of Istanbul are, and helped me navigate a surprising amount. I would be interested to read more from this author, I think his prose, writing style and talent for creating atmosphere would be brilliant in fiction. 

Age Rating 14+ Deeply dysfunctional family, depression and sex.