The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely
Faber and Faber. First published 2009
Kamal is a wealthy young man in Istanbul in the 1970s, about to be engaged to be married to Sibel, a girl from his own class. About two months before the grand engagement party, he goes to a shop to buy a handbag for her, and suddenly falls in love with the shop girl, Fusun. Fusun is distantly related 'poor cousin', whom he has known from childhood and vaguely met on and off since then, but her beauty strikes him with full force only now. He has no trouble seducing her, and from then on, for the next couple of months, they meet regularly in a flat his parents have set apart for him, for some his most divine moments of sex. The rest of the book tells of what happens over the next couple of years as Kamal breaks his engagement to Sibel, and slowly gains the acceptance of Fusun's orthodox family, in the process neglecting his business. The story ends in tragedy, as all 'great' love stories must. Fusun dies in a car accident, and Kamal is left to pick up the pieces of their life together, almost literally, and arrange them in a 'Museum of Innocence'.
I am writing this a couple of years after I had read the book, and realise that I have forgotten most of the details. What stays is with me is Pamuk's description of Istanbul upper-middle class and middle class life in the 1960s and early 70s. It is much as I imagine such life would have been in Bombay or Calcutta at about the same time, though this I gather only from some little personal experience on the fringes of that kind of society, and some reading. Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy' illustrate comparable lifestyles. Also what stays with me about the book is the description of the Museum that Kamal has made by collecting bits and pieces of his life with Fusun - a lost earring, movie tickets, some pieces of furniture with special connotations for him, and so on. The narrator, Kamal, connects each item with some specific incident in the romance, and builds the story as a kind of a tour through the Museum. The writing is leisurely, slow even, actually a bit too slow for my tastes. I did not find the book especially noteworthy. It is more than 700 pages long, and requires an investment of time and effort which is not repaid, neither in terms of stimulating thought, nor in terms of reading pleasure.
I am writing this a couple of years after I had read the book, and realise that I have forgotten most of the details. What stays is with me is Pamuk's description of Istanbul upper-middle class and middle class life in the 1960s and early 70s. It is much as I imagine such life would have been in Bombay or Calcutta at about the same time, though this I gather only from some little personal experience on the fringes of that kind of society, and some reading. Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy' illustrate comparable lifestyles. Also what stays with me about the book is the description of the Museum that Kamal has made by collecting bits and pieces of his life with Fusun - a lost earring, movie tickets, some pieces of furniture with special connotations for him, and so on. The narrator, Kamal, connects each item with some specific incident in the romance, and builds the story as a kind of a tour through the Museum. The writing is leisurely, slow even, actually a bit too slow for my tastes. I did not find the book especially noteworthy. It is more than 700 pages long, and requires an investment of time and effort which is not repaid, neither in terms of stimulating thought, nor in terms of reading pleasure.
No comments:
Post a Comment