Turkish author Elif Ţafak interweaves the story of Shams and Rumi with that of Ella Rubinstein in her latest novel, “The Forty Rules of Love.”

Is love just a passionate emotion to be felt by the young? Do love and passion within a marriage have to give way to routine and drudgery? If not, what can reignite the flame once more?

These questions have occupied many over the centuries. Authors have written detailed essays, playwrights have penned plays and poets have composed stunning poems on love. Philosophers have mused over the subject, marriage-guidance counselors have struggled with the issue, and women’s magazines have thrived on it.

The heroine of Elif Ţafak’s latest novel, “The Forty Rules of Love,” struggles with these questions. Ella Rubinstein has been married for a couple of decades to a dentist. Their relationship is defined now by companionship, not passion. She has three kids, who are the center of her life, and this life is defined by the usual middle-class list of insurance, retirement plan, college savings plan and a joint bank account.

Love was to come to Ella out of the blue, and from one of the most unexpected places.

Ella has recently been employed as a book reviewer, reading manuscripts for a publisher. Her first assignment is a story set in 13th century Konya. “In the time that she was reading it her life would be re-written.”

A Scotsman who has become a Sufi has written a novel based on the life of the famous poet Rumi (also known as Mevlana and famous for the whirling dervish order and his mystic poetry). In his novel he deals with the meeting of Rumi and Shams, a wandering dervish who has unconventional ways. This meeting between the two 13th-century mystics was to change both of their lives and to lead one to a tragic death and the other to his greatest spiritual achievements.

It is a friendship that was to make the survivor into one of Turkey’s greatest poets, leaving as his legacy such gems as:

“Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of

Love, living is a burden -- as you have seen.”

Ţafak’s early works almost seemed to try too hard to be clever, incorporating imagery or convoluted ideas that never quite fit comfortably with the story. In this novel her technique has matured and the clever imagery sits effortlessly on the page. Reflections between love in the 13th century and love in the 21st century seem natural rather than contrived, and they serve to heighten the tale, rather than deflect from it, and the reader is gently drawn into a story within a story.

Resisting the temptation to copy Ţafak’s device of a book within a book, and weave Ella’s book review within my book review, let’s consider the thought so tantalizing to every author: “Can you be changed by what you read?”

Every author writes with a purpose, to transmit an idea, to create an impression. When Ella picks up the manuscript she is to review, she is at first ambivalent about it. “She wasn’t sure if she could concentrate on a subject as irrelevant to her life as Sufism and a time as distant as the 13th century.” But she is brought to a stop with a jolt as the first sentences of the novel echo some comments she and her teenage daughter have just made to each other during a heated exchange concerning her daughter’s announcement she is to get married to her young boyfriend. Ella was as shocked as if the author had written her name and address into the text.

As she begins to read the story of Shams the dervish, traveling from Samarkand in search of a companion to whom he could pass on his life’s work -- the 40 rules of love -- Ella realizes that she and her husband have let the days go by and the routine take over and “time run the course of its inevitable torpor.”

Ţafak weaves the story of Shams’ life in the manuscript around each of the 40 rules. Again, she does this in such a masterly way that the scenes do not seem a contrived way of getting us to the next rule: the rules float naturally in the place she has set them. “Faith is only a word if there is no love at the center.” “Love is the reason, love is the goal.”

As Shams passes the rules to Rumi and those around him, he also passes them to Ella as she reads and to us too as we read Ella reading Aziz Zahara’s telling of Shams and Rumi’s story.

Ella enjoys the story, and with every new rule, she finds herself mulling her life over. “Ella allowed herself to muse over love and wondered how she, hurt and cynical as she was, could ever experience love again.”

It is not just Sham’s story that changes her life, but how she acts on it. On an impulse she writes to the author. Now Ţafak can start to weave 21st century letters between author and reviewer into the tale, too. Through these letters, Ella becomes addicted to Aziz’s words, and finds the love her life is missing.

In a clever section reminiscent of “84 Charing Cross Road,” the way they sign off their correspondence to each other reflects the growing intimacy between them. They proceed from yours sincerely, to warm regards; from warm regards to best; and from best, through warmly, to love.

Aziz Zahara was changed by his encounter with the poems of Rumi. Rumi himself was changed by his friendship with Shams. Now Ella is changed by meeting them all. Ţafak writes: “Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformations. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.”

Not every meeting leads to a life-changing encounter. Not every book, however challenging and well written, leads to a changed life. But sometimes you pick up a story just at the right time of life, and it has the power to change your thinking and from this your actions.

In the introduction, we read that if a stone is thrown into a fast-moving river there will be very little effect. The river carries on its course, undaunted. But if the same stone is thrown into a lake its ripples spread out from the epicenter, maybe even washing the shore with small waves. The same stone has a very different effect.

Ella Rubinstein’s life is the steady lake. The thrown stone can create waves on the calm surface of her life. With each chapter she reads, the false exterior she has built up is penetrated. She also is continually faced with a decision: to read on and be changed more, or to give up and stay with the status quo.

At one point she dreams of writing the 40 rules of the deeply settled housewife: “#1 stop looking for love and running after the impossible dream.” The message of Elif Ţafak -- or is it Aziz Zahara? Or Rumi? Or Shams? -- is that love is never an impossible dream. On the contrary, love of every sort -- whether between a man and a woman, between family members, or between close friends -- is as necessary for life as food and drink, sleeping and breathing.

“The Forty Rules of Love,” by Elif Shafak, published by Penguin, 12.99 pounds in paperback ISBN: 978-067091873-7

17 October 2010

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