Orlando Sentinel - November 7, 2004
STRANGERS IN STRANGE LAND STRUGGLE TO FEEL AT HOME
Reviewed By William Mckeen, Special to the Sentinel

The Saint of Incipient Insanities by Elif Shafak, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 368 pages.


Maybe it goes like this -- we spend the first part of life trying to leave home, and the last part of life trying to find home.

The Saint of Incipient Insanities is about a lot of things, but the concept of home seems to echo on every page. The story is driven by three immigrant graduate students in post 9-11 America: a Turk, a Moroccan and a Spaniard living in Boston and pursuing academic careers.

The college novel has a long tradition (think F. Scott Fitzgerald), but the focus here on immigrant students -- and the storytelling of Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, writing in English for the first time -- elevates this book to a different plane.

One of those students is Omer, the Turk, who has lost his dots. His name should have umlauts over the O and it is Omer, not Omar, as so many dot-dropping Americans rename him. Afraid of losing his identity entirely, he has gravitated toward other international students, including Abed, the Moroccan, and Piyu, an anal-retentive Spaniard.

It s an American woman, Gail, who haunts these men and who dominates the novel. Omer is deeply in love with her and finds himself tormented by her demons: her confused sexuality, her suicidal issues and her own struggle with identity. Although America is her home turf, Gail feels less at home than Omer, Abed and Piyu.

The story is a round-robin passed between these characters, making parts of the book the story of expatriate buddies and other parts a dive into the chasm of mental illness. It ends up being a mixture of comedy and drama, all driven by colorful, complex characters, truly strangers in this strange land who find some kind of home and a variation on the American dream. In post-9-11 America with its fears and apprehensions, variations are required.

Despite being a professor, Shafak does not pontificate or indulge in the show-off literary tricks of so many modern novelists. Instead, she explores character -- often, conveyed through generous dialogue -- in the same manner as Charles Dickens. Her exposition is fuller and more instructive and descriptive than many of her contemporaries, enhancing that 19th-century feel.

It makes for a great combination: a rich, satisfying and utterly traditional manner of storytelling with an up-to-the-minute contemporary theme.

William McKeen is a writer in Gainesville.