The Forty Rules Of Love Archives -

The Poison Tree is as decadent as your finest chocolate, a truly delicious hold-all-my-calls kind of book. It has all of the elements of a bestseller and, at times reminded me a bit of a drug trip. This read was truly addictive and when it was over I was truly craving more. The Poison Tree, by first time author Erin Kelly, arrived accompanying the latest novel of a more established author and I wasn’t even planning to give this a read for months because it wasn’t requested by me and my list of titles to review is massive. But from the second I picked this one up I was gone. The Poison Tree begins as Karen Clarke and daughter Alice,9, have just picked up Rex Capel from prison. He has been there serving a sentence for murder. Now he is to be reintegrated into his former life, or what is left of that life. We know Rex is Alice’s father, but we don’t know why he was in prison exactly. The narrator Karen, preoccupied and somewhat paranoid, lets drop a single name BIBA on the car ride back to their new life together and that sets the stage for the slow unravelling of the story of Rex, Biba and Karen. Rex and Biba are brother and sister, orphans they claim, inaccurately. Karen, a gifted language student, is going through the motions of completing her ascent into academia saddled with a dull boyfriend named Simon. When he breaks up with her she finds herself numb to the loss and open to the idea of possibility. Right on the cusp of one memorable summer, Karen encounters Biba, a young actress seeking a dialect coach. Biba is a force of nature, flamboyant, exotic and charmingly magnetic. But the very energy that fuels her desirability also threatens to consume her and anyone who gets close to her. Kelly’s first novel could have easily slipped into softcore porn territory, but it falls just shy of treading there, showing remarkable restraint on the part of the author. This is the story of one self indulgent summer that changes the course of all their lives. There are many surprises here in this taut thriller that is extremely well written for a first novel. I hesitate to spoil any of them for my readers. Erin Kelly is a former freelance journalist from North London. Her prose can be quite lovely; for instance: “That night in bed I lay awake on my right-hand side. Bruises, like sunburn are nocturnal and the one on my left thigh was waking up as I tried to sleep, a soft dark badge to commemorate the day’s chases and revelations.” Strangely, this is a novel that works very well alternating back and forth between past and present. The author does so in a logical fashion, as her narrator moves in and out memory, often triggered by a word. Kelly doesn’t superimpose a new chapter or alternate voices to cue the reader to her intent. Although there are a few jarring transitions, for the most part, this style creates a hazy almost drugged feel to the book, echoing the experience of that summer. The past blurs with the present and the effect is almost seamless, organic. Tiny clues are dropped throughout the book about the crimes that took place and the ensuing scandal. But in the end I didn’t find the outcome to be predictable at all. In fact, as I slowly guessed one plot twist another would blindside me. If I had to pick a single fault in this amazing read it would be the prologue which sets the tone, but also isn’t really necessary to the plot. The title of the novel is taken from William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree.” The Poison Tree is a stunning debut.

The Poison Tree, by Erin Kelly, Paula Dorman Books Viking, Jan. 10, 2011, 322 pages, $26.50 US and $33.50 Canadian. Thriftymommastips rates this one $$$$ out of $$$$$. I received a free copy of the book in order to complete this review.

A truly good story takes you on a voyage to a place you didn’t know you wanted to visit. The Forty Rules of Love is just that kind of story; reading it is just that kind of journey. Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s best-selling female authors. Up until I received this novel, her latest, The Forty Rules of Love, I had never heard of Shafak and that’s a shame really. Shafak is a gifted storyteller. The Forty Rules of Love consists of two parallel stories, one of which is set in contemporary time and the other of which takes place in the 13th century. The contemporary plot revolves around a housewife, Ella, about to turn 40, who is hired as a reader for a literary agent to read a book dubbed Sweet Blasphemy. Ella is a realist or so she thinks at the start of the book when she begins reading a new novelist’s rumination. The Forty Rules of Love is in some ways her coming of age story. Quickly Ella falls in love with the prose in the novel she reviews and then reaches out to the author through email beginning a relationship. But what sort of relationship will it be? That remains up to Ella, taken by the writing of this new author Aziz. She knows little of him but his talent and this portion of the book is told in a nouveau sort of epistolary for our times – through written emails to each other. Their emails grow increasingly amorous. “Her first email to Aziz was not a letter so much as an invitation, a cry for help. But Ella had no way of knowing this as she sat in the silence of her kitchen and composed a note to an unknown writer she didn’t expect to meet now or any time in the future.” The plot within Sweet Blasphemy revolves around the Sufi poet Rumi and his spiritual encounter with Shams of Tabriz. As Shams schools Rumi in spiritual matters he learns to open his mind more fully to that which he cannot see or touch and he realizes his life has been missing a key ingredient. Ella, in the contemporary plot line, can be seen to follow the same story arc only with a more romantic outcome. As Shams unveils each of his rules of love to Rumi, Ella and Aziz can be seen experiencing, internalizing and reacting to the fictional rules as their own. There is a certain subtle magic realism about this novel, not as overt as the Latin American authors who perfected the genre, but gentler and slightly more spiritual in nature. Perhaps that’s another reason I so enjoyed this book. The characters in this book are beautifully illustrated and the narrative at times complex, but not so as to detract from the read, only so that it illuminates the strength of the writer’s talent. In the end there is an unexpected twist and prose so lovely and insightful that it is also slightly heartbreaking. The Forty Rules of Love is more than a great love story: it is also an intriguing look at the intimate relationship that can exist between author and reader, writer and reviewer.
The Forty Rules of Love, 2010, Viking, $32.50 Canadian and $25.95 US.
Thriftymommastips’ rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$
thriftymomma is not compensated for her reviews, but receives a copy of the books she reviews.