'Silent House' by Orhan Pamuk (Review - IFFP 2013, Number 9)

Our next leg of the IFFP magical mystery tour takes us off to Turkey to consider a work by a very familiar name.   It's no surprise that a Nobel-Prize winner finds himself on the longlist - it is surprising that it's taking this long though.  Today's choice was originally published three decades ago...

*****
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk (translated by Robert Finn - from Hamish Hamilton)
What's it all about?
The year is 1980, the location Cennethisar, a coastal village fifty kilometres from Istanbul.  Three siblings have come to visit their grandmother, making their annual pilgrimage to pay their respects, visit their parents' graves and have some fun in the sun while they're at it.  This year, though, is destined to be different - turbulent times are just around the corner, and the family is about to be caught up in the fever sweeping the country.

Pamuk's novel is set at a time of great upheaval in Turkey.  According to Wikipedia, the overall death toll in the country in the 1970s from violence is estimated at 5,000, with nearly ten assassinations per day.  Just a month after the events of this novel, there was a coup d'état, after which the military ruled for three years.  Even in the sleepy town of Cennethisar, rival gangs of 'Communists' and 'Fascists' are roaming the streets, extorting protection money and attacking the enemy.  This summer is unlikely to end well...

Silent House is narrated by five voices, each of which is distinct and well written: Fatma, the grandmother; Faruk and Metin (Fatma's two grandsons); Recep, her servant; and Hasan, a character whose relationship to the family is a lot more complicated than it first appears.  The five voices provide a continuous narrative, one taking up the story where another breaks off, and because of this, the novel is a little slow to get into gear (as many reviews have remarked).  During the first half of the novel, there is little plot to speak of, and when bookish Faruk talks about his literary plans, it's hard to avoid drawing parallels with the book in hand:

"Someone reading my book from cover to cover will during those weeks and months end up able to glimpse that cloudlike mass of events that I managed to perceive while working here, and like me he'll murmur excitedly: This is history, this is history and life..."
p.165 (Hamish Hamilton, 2013)

Like Pamuk, Faruk is more concerned with depicting life than fascinating the reader with his narrative.

Gradually though, the family squabbles and parties give way to more serious issues.  We see hints of potential trouble as Hasan and his friends start to throw their weight around.  The right-wing gangs frown upon the flesh the holidaymakers show on the beach and the alcohol the rich kids swig back each night.  As they grow in confidence, the gang members begin to throw their weight around more and more, which spells trouble for anyone caught reading a Communist newspaper - like Fatma's grand-daughter, Nilgün...

What eventually develops from the pages of Silent House is a picture of two cultures clashing, a national challenge mirroring the global struggles of the Cold War.  The two sides feel themselves locked in a fight where there can be only one winner.  It's a fight between the new ways and the old, Communism versus Fascism, secular life against the appeal of Islam - and it provides young men with a taste for violence with an outlet for their rage, justified or otherwise.  Hasan (who has a lot to be angry about) certainly has no intention of leading a quiet life:

"I know that the day they see I've grown used to it, they'll be so pleased, and they'll declare with satisfaction, He's finally learned how it goes in life, but I'm not signing up for your life, gentlemen, I'll get a gun and teach you how it goes." (p.154)

Over the course of the novel, it is Hasan's development which mirrors the events starting to happen in the country, and his fate which Turkey shares.

Silent House is a slow-moving, but ultimately fascinating slice of life.  It's a collection of personal stories set against the backdrop of a time of national importance, and I felt it worked really well.  Now imagine how it might have read when it was first published - only three years after the event ;)

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Yes.  I enjoyed it, despite the slow start.  After a hundred pages, like many people (some of whom never got to the end...), I had my doubts, but it eventually draws you in.  Oh, and it makes a nice change from the Second World War too.  This could well be one of my top six when I finally get to the end of my reading.

Will it make the shortlist?
No.  I'm not sure that the judges will see enough here to get it over the line.  In a weaker year (in need of star power), it'd make it.  This year's longlist is fairly strong, and the shortlist won't need a Nobel Prize Winner to give it extra appeal :)

*****
Onwards and upwards - it's just a short hop from Turkey up to Italy's Adriatic coast.  Trieste is supposed to be lovely at this time of year...

A Few Odds and Ends

I've already managed to put up a couple of reviews this month (which constitutes a good month at the moment!), so I thought I'd continue my weekly trend, this time with bite-size reviewettes of the other books I've got through in May so far.  Shall we?

*****

Let's start with a Nobel prize winner (just because).  Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red (translated by Erdag Göknar) is a mystery set in sixteenth-century Istanbul, involving the beautiful, but fading art of traditional Arabic 'illumination' of literary texts.  One of a group of four master artists has been been murdered,  presumably by one of the other three, and Black, recently returned from a long absence in the East, is charged with finding the guilty culprit.  If he can win the hand of the beautiful Shekure along the way, so much the better :)

The novel consists of many chapters, each having its own voice, told by one of the characters (or a drawing...).  It's an interesting way to tell a story, especially as the murderer actually has two voices - his real character, and that of 'the Murderer'.  It makes for an intriguing tale, but I didn't really love this book.  I was never really able to lose myself in the story, partly because of the, at times, slow pace, but perhaps more due to the unfamiliar setting which (to be honest) didn't really interest me that much.  As a tale of masters of a dying art form struggling to cope with the inevitable overthrow of their way of life, it is a fascinating story - I'll need another example of Pamuk's work before I can really say whether I like his style though.

*****

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai (translated by Donald Keene) is, as I'm sure you can guess, a little more in my line.  A fairly short novel, it tells the tale of Kazuko and her family, Japanese minor nobility who have descended in the world following the death of the father, and the financial strains caused by the aftermath of the Second World War.  Kazuko and her mother move away from Tokyo in order to stretch out their meagre reserves, but their lives are turned upside down again by the arrival of Kazuko's brother Naoji, believed lost in the Pacific War.  Far from this being a happy family reunion, however, it is merely the start of a final freefall into poverty and distress.

I've read a lot of Japanese fiction over the past few years, but most of it has been set either before or after WWII, and I have the feeling that there isn't as much literature dealing with this time as is the case in Germany (where it's virtually its own genre...).  While it's possible that I just haven't found these books yet, even Mishima's The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy, which spans fifty years between 1920 and 1970, conveniently skips the war years completely.  The Setting Sun then is a welcome insight into post-war Japan and the problems people had in adjusting to a new style of life and government.  The old aristocracy has lost its importance, the Emperor is not longer a deity, and Americans roam the streets of the conquered people (albeit very much in the background).

This leaves people like Kazuko and Naoji with a lot to work through if they want to carry on with their lives, and, in Japanese literature, that 'if' is never a given.  A quick glance at Dazai's Wikipedia page will soon give you an idea of his, shall we say, lack of optimism for the future, a sense of negativity which is shared by his protagonists.  It all makes for an interesting slice of Japanese social history and a very entertaining read - just don't expect many happy endings here...

*****

A while back, I read Andrew McGahan's 1988 and was impressed enough to make a library request for Praise (written before 1988 but set after), where we meet Gordon on his return to Brisbane.  Fed up with his job, he uses a management reshuffle as an excuse to quit, sinking gently into the bludger lifestyle of drink, drugs and trips to Centrelink.  Still paranoid about his lack of sexual prowess, he somehow slips into a relationship with Cynthia, whose appetite for bedroom activities far outstrips his.  When she decides to forgo a move to Darwin to give their nascent relationship a chance, Gordon isn't entirely sure that it's for the best - especially as his high school crush Rachel is back on the scene...

Praise reminds me a little of Helen Garner's Monkey Grip, and could be seen as making a similar account of early-nineties Brisbane to the one Garner's novel made of mid-seventies Melbourne.  I'd have to say though that it doesn't do it nearly as well.  I liked 1988, with its subtle, psychological undertones, a story of a city boy stuck in the middle of nowhere and forced to face up to his inadequacies.  On the other hand, Praise just felt like a detailed list of one person's sexual exploits and drug-fuelled indiscretions over a particularly unproductive period of his life.  I got through it fairly quickly, and, although I enjoyed reading it, I was happy to move onto something else - and not much of the book has stuck in my mind.

McGahan went on to win the Miles Franklin award with The White Earth (which I'm planning to read at some point), so I trust that his later books are more similar in vein to 1988 than Praise.  I know it sounds like I really hated this book, but that's not the case; it's just that I was expecting something very different - a progression, both in character and writing - to what I found.  I forgot that what I was reading actually predated what I'd previously read...

Has anyone else read this - and do you have a different opinion?  Please let me know :)