Last fall, 200 pages into Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, I wrote a rave initial reaction, hurrying to get back to the book. But then I switched gears and started on another novel, leaving it untouched on my bedside table since then. Last week, a long-time customer came to our office door. She belongs to a book group and, on the basis of my rave, had recommended Paumuk’s new novel for the bookgroup. She asked whether I had cooled towards the book when I read on during the next 300 pages. Much to her chagrin, not only she, but many members of her group, got impatient enough with a sudden, mid-book drop in the pace to cease reading it, and at their monthly meeting, everyone, she reported, disliked the book. When I heard this, in the next two days I went back and finished the novel.
The narrator has an eight-year obsession with a young girl, Fusun, who jilts him after a torrid love affair. There is no doubt that in the second half of the story, this portion succeeds in slowing the tempo almost to a halt. However, Kemal's self-absorption is not without its own humor. Kemal visits Fusun’s family home for dinner most nights and from where he begins to steal hundreds of objects out of which he constructs his museum of innocence. Kemal then travels the world visiting over 5000 similar museums dedicated to the relics of a single life and expressing its "soul"- starting with Freud's in Vienna.
I won’t spoil the ending but I think it’s fair to say that Pamuk has written a thoroughly post-modern novel that challenges our assumptions about reality while at the same time offering a beautifully intricate portrait of Istanbul. Yes, I’m still raving about Pamuk’s new work, but out of curiosity I went to the website of www.goodreads.com and found that there was a wide spectrum of readers' reactions. Many loved it, but more than a few hated it, and that’s always our daily challenge in our bookstore, to find the right book for the right person.