New Fiction for the New Year

by Caitlin Doggart

Cape Women, Issue Winter 2010

“The Forty Rules of Love”

by Elif Shafak

Available February 2010 from Viking

Author Elif Shafak may already be familiar as the Turkish novelist charged by her government in 2006 for “insulting Turkishness” by having a character reference the Armenian Genocide in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul. (Amidst international outrage, charges were eventually dropped.)

Her latest novel alternates between a Northampton housewife named Ella Rubinstein, the manuscript for “The Forty Rules of Love” that Ella is evaluating for a literary agency, and her correspondence with the author.

Ella’s sections remain faithful to her interpretation of events, and the reader feels privy to her exasperation with herself for ignoring the flaws in her marriage and her over-involvement in the lives of her three children, as well as her blossoming self-confidence as she emails the author of the manuscript.

Juxtaposed with her sections are short chapters from the perspectives of a wide variety of characters in the manuscript as they recount the story of Shams of Tabriz, a 13th-century wandering dervish who influenced the mystic poet Rumi.

The short chapters are reminiscent of fairy tales for adults - the elements of a dangerous ancient setting, unexplained powers, and the “rules” of love as they are revealed by Shams throughout the story.

As Ella reads about Sufi concepts of love, her philosophical outlook begins to change, affecting her comfortable suburban life in ways she never would have expected.

Cape Women