Lives formed in Oxford and Istanbul

~ Three Daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak ~

An engaging novel, characterised by a distinctive writing style which demonstrates a fine-tuned consciousness and critical awareness. Particularly enjoyable are the author’s acerbic but good tempered observations on Turks, Turkey, and its geopolitics.

Shafak unfolds the story of Peri, or Nazperi Nalbantoglu, a ‘half and half’, a Muslim who drinks alcohol but does not eat pork, daughter of a deeply religious mother and irreverent father whose marriage is fraught and acrimonious. Peri, who goes to Oxford University, and comes back changed – the 6^th type of student in Oxford, as identified by the feisty British-Iranian student, Shirin.

According to Shirin, there are 6 types of students at Oxford:

Social-environmental-justice types, talkative, serious, full of good causes
Eurotrash from wealthy European families who all know each other, sophisticated and spoilt
Public school, full of cliques chosen based on which schools they had been to, sporting and hard drinking, excluding others without the social background to join their clubs
International students – 4a) those who hang out with others speaking heir mother tongues; 4b) those who try to distance themselves as much as possible from their compatriots
Nerds – serious, studious, passionate about study to the point of neurosis, content in solitude, “worthy of respect but impossible to befriend”
Those who arrive here as one thing and become something else altogether touched by the magic wand of Oxford.

Peri, who is, in Shafak’s sardonic summation within the 2^nd page of the novel:

A fine wife, a fine mother, a fine housewife, a fine citizen, a fine modern Muslim.
(p4)

Shafak of course then proceeds to peel back this summation. Delightfully, she does not oversimplify. Peri is no hypocrite or social climber. That good citizen and good wife&mother is not a mere façade. Peri is sincere, earnest, deeply intelligent and self-aware. Shafak finely juxtaposes her character with this depiction of other Istanbulites mid-novel, in a dinner party in a seaside mansion:

Peri looked around. These were God-fearing, husband-fearing, divorce-fearing, poverty-fearing, terrorism-fearing, crowd-fearing, disgrace-fearing, madness-fearing women, whose houses were immaculately clean, whose minds were clear about that they expected from the future. Early on in their lives they had exchanged ‘the art of coaxing the father’ for ‘the art of coaxing the husband’. Those who had been married long enough had become bolder and louder in their opinions, yet they knew when not to cross the line.
(p209-201)

The novel is structured in a back and forth oscillation between the dinner party in Istanbul in 2016, and Peri’s childhood and student days in Oxford (2001-2002). It is made clear from the start that something happened in Oxford, a scandal of some sort, that resulted in Peri never finishing her degree. A something which changed the course of her life:

Time, like a skilful tailor, had seamlessly stitched together the two fabrics which sheathed Peri’s life: what people thought of her and what she thought of herself. The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted.
(p4)

Delightfully, Shafak uses many metaphors in her writing, enriching it with lively imagery. The intrigue of the novel then lies in how Peri has come to this point in her life, fighting Istanbul traffic, her daughter in the passenger seat, on their way to a very exclusive dinner party, and then pulling over on impulse giving chase on foot when her handbag is stolen out of her car, where (and when) she ends up discovering her own capacity for killing another.

Throughout the novel, Shafak’s attachment to and pride in Istanbul rings out in her wonderful portrayals of this city, as teeming, brimming, damnable and yet clearly deeply loved. She does not hesitate to criticise Istanbul, Turkey, its people, but as one would criticise an integral, beloved, infuriating family member. Shafak’s analysis is particularly pointed and insightful when it is turned on her own community:

in Turkey, as in all countries haunted by questions if identity, you were, primarily, what you rejected.
(p111)

There are passages which are lyrical, when Shafak’s reflective and narrative abilities fuse brilliantly:

“Like a magic wand in the wrong hands, the traffic turned minutes into hours. Humans into brutes and any trace of sanity into sheer lunacy. Istanbul didn’t seem to mind. Time, brutes and lunacy it had aplenty. One hour more, one hour less; one brute more, one lunatic less – past a certain point, it made no difference.
Madness coursed through this city’s streets, like an intoxicating drug in the bloodstream. Every day millions of Istanbulites downed another dose, not realizing that they were becoming more and more unbalanced. People who would refuse to share their bread shared their insanity instead. There was something inscrutable about the collective loss of reason: if enough eyes experienced the same hallucination, it turned into a truth; if enough people laughed at the same misery, it became a funny little joke.
(p5)

However, regretfully, the novel does not manage to deliver on its early promise. The plot ends up thinner than one could have hoped for. There is no fitting conclusion – the latter part of the story is undeveloped. There is no explanation of how Peri led her life post-Oxford up till the time we see her apparently happily married and a mother. The metamorphose of Peri from the searching soul she was, into the solid citizen and pillar of community, which would have been a fascinating tale, is not actually written up, although hinted at throughout. The plotline becomes weaker and weaker as the novel progresses – the psychic attending the dinner party, the terror at the end, even the theft of the handbag…all that leads nowhere in particular. There is no resolution, just hanging threads of an untidy narrative unfinished, half baked.

What redeems this novel is Shafak’s writing style and intelligence. It is a pleasure to read her words, share her thoughts, even in a decidedly imperfect piece of work. A good editor would have made all the difference. I shall definitely be looking out for her other novels, and for a writer of this talent, am willing to endure a fair bit of undercooking.