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.