Three Daughters of Eve
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
An Indie Next Pick The stunning, timely new novel from the acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul. Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground--an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past--and a love--Peri had tried desperately to forget. Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the dinner, and amidst an opulence that is surely ill-begotten, terrorist attacks occur across the city. Competing in Peri's mind however are the memories invoked by her almost-lost polaroid, of the time years earlier when she was sent abroad for the first time, to attend Oxford University. As a young woman there, she had become friends with the charming, adventurous Shirin, a fully assimilated Iranian girl, and Mona, a devout Egyptian-American. Their arguments about Islam and feminism find focus in the charismatic but controversial Professor Azur, who teaches divinity, but in unorthodox ways. As the terrorist attacks come ever closer, Peri is moved to recall the scandal that tore them all apart. Elif Shafak is the number one bestselling novelist in her native Turkey, and her work is translated and celebrated around the world. In Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.
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Thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book prior to publication here in the U.S. This has not influenced my thoughts or opinions or about this book.
Three Daughters of Eve is a book told from Peri's point of view as the main character, and the bulk of the plot alternates between flashbacks to 2001 and snippets of everyday upper-class Turkish life in 2016. There are also some chapters that show Peri's family life and how that shaped her trajectory, which set the stage for what's to come.
For a while, you're not sure where the plot is building, other than Peri now lives in Turkey after leaving Oxford early, and you know that part of her leaving has something to do with a professor and a class she took. The book builds towards two climaxes – one in the 2001 timeline and one in the 2016 timeline.
While I liked this book and found it insightful, I disliked Peri as a character. I'm fine with unlikable characters, but I don't enjoy characters who don't take agency of their lives if given the opportunity. Some of her choices made no sense and perhaps can be chalked up to youth, but made her seem immature and underdeveloped. Additionally, there is a recurring but seemingly random mystical element that feels more distracting than revelatory, and when you find out the roots of this mystical plot device, you wonder why this was thrown in. It complicates relationships unnecessarily.
