The Museum of Innocence
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
"It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn't know it." So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Fusun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie--a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay--until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Fusun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Fusun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure.In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart's reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society's manners and mores, and of one man's broken heart.A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional--its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk's greatest achievement.From the Hardcover edition.
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I picked this book up, hoping to find refuge from already monotonous and boring days. Lo and behold, The Museum of Innocence. Boy, how wrong was I in assuming I could find solace in this book. This book had an interesting plot point in the beginning with a spoiled-mildly egotistic-oblivious-narcissistic protagonist Kemal. Throughout the reading, I had a love-hate relationship with the book. Either I would love the book for what it is and how it made me think and feel. Or, at other times, I would hate the book for what it is and how it made me think and feel. Let me elucidate; I loved the book for the fact that the plot and characters had so much depth, and it was almost like I could peep into Kemal's world like a fly on the wall. The book was like an onion slowly peeling itself off into its insides, the crux. And I hated the book for its monotonous tone. It was so dull and uninteresting after the engagement party until Fusun's divorce. Literally, nothing happened. It went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. At times I would read so many pages, yet I could surmise what I read in under a couple of sentences. That's how boring the plot went about in the middle portion. But then, all this is justifiable because this shows Kemal's extremely passionate love for Fusun and justifies him building a museum portraying their love. And if Fusun died without Kemal and her having a proper “intimate” time, I swear to God I would have been so pissed at the author and never forgive him for making me read so much to know that they will die sad and disappointed.
All in all, even though the book is extremely frustrating and tedious to read. Ultimately, it was rewarding to finish it off; to finally have closure to the painful and pathetic life of Kemal.
The Museum of Innocence may not display the ambitious storytelling of Pamuk's previous novels that I read. But it succeeds tremendously in its intentions: to portray the social and cultural structure of Istanbul in the last decades of the twentieth century; to tell a powerful love story of an unlikeable couple, for whom we feel sympathetic by the end; and to assert that it is the small events and articles that constitute the entire life. It tells us to celebrate them and relish in the memories they elicit.
