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- Verified Buyer
Orhan Pamuk's The Silent House is a curious read. For those who've not previously read works of the 2006 Nobel prize winner, this is a good starting point because of the book's accessibility, which can't always be said about Orhan's novels, and because it introduces a wide range of concerns explored in later novels.For those familiar with his works, Silent House (SH) speaks to other books in Pamuk's body of work, especially Museum of Innocence, My Name is Red, and to a lesser degree Snow.Plot in SH is deceptively simple. A trio of grandchildren are visiting their curmudgeonly grandmother. That's it. Much of the action is repetitive: the granny (Fatma, the name of Muhammad's daughter) retires to her den to denounce the world and all who live in it, while she is waited on pretty much hand and foot by a dwarf who is the bastard son of her deceased husband. One of the grandchildren goes to the beach every morning and reads a lot. The eldest grandchild is an alcoholic historian, not unlike his father and his father's father (see the pattern?), and a teenage grandchild, who like his cohorts, must remain in perpetual motion, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Underlying the family circle is that of the half family consisting of two bastards (Recep the dwarf and Ismail) by Fatma's husband Selahattin, and the son Hasan of the bastard Ismail.Here it might be worth noting that while SH was originally published in Turkish in 1983, I think a strong argument can be made for parallels between Pamuk's Hasan, who is marginalized by a lack of prospects in Turkish society as he comes under the influence of right-wing extremists and Mohamed Atta's marginalization in Egyption society, which opened the door for falling under the influence of al Qaeda and leading the 9.11 attacks. This alone makes SH compellingly relevant, but because the book explores such fundamental issues there are many other ways that it addresses our times.Plot aside, Pamuk does a good job of pulling the reader through what might have become ponderous text in the hands of a less skilled story teller. The chapters are titled and short, with enough inner tensions and action to keep the pages turning. Within the short visit to grandmother's house, the characters explore the nature of history, what is the waking world and which is illusion, fascist vs socialist politics, the modern western world's conflict with more traditional culture rooted in religious beliefs and security found in doing things the way ancestors did them, how these polarities influence one another, and the individual quest to find or create meaning in this life.Granny and her servant dwarf - they are modeled on the story of Robinson Crusoe and his servant shipwreck on an island (she leaves the house only to visit the graves of her husband and son), while the dwarf Recep rarely leaves the house and is badgered by granny whenever he does - I found to be the more compelling characters.She brings to mind Miss Rosa from Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! Both are shipwrecked in a house in which they spent their lives, both bitterly denouncing their worlds and the world around them, especially their respective societies. Both only get out during their respective stories to visit the deceased, or presumed dead. The contemplations that are revealed in Granny's chapters (each chapter is a perspective presented almost as a dialogue by a specific character) I found the most interesting.Recep - the physically disfigured character and a bastard in society's eyes - is the wisest of the cast, and the most balanced. I'm not sure how dwarfs are viewed by Islamic myths, but in India the deity Shiva frequently is portrayed dancing on a vanquished dwarf, who represents ignorance. Maybe someone else can expand on this seeming reversal.But more than anything - like Pamuk's other novels - this is a book of ideas. In addition to exploring the intersection of West and East, common to all Pamuk's novels, Pamuk plays with the relationship between objects and memory, which is the primary subject of Museum of Innocence; explores the worlds of the waking and subconscious later examined in more detail in My Name Is Red; and introduces the politics of the left and right in Turkey, later expanded in Snow.A story from the Koran that is alluded to in HS and My Name Is Red deals with three young men who are sealed in a cave and after a long sleep emerge into a changed world. This story is a favorite of Pamuk's. Watch for barking dogs in all of Pamuk's works as it was the barking of dogs that woke the young men from their sleep.At one point (p.330), Fatma is shaken from her isolation and cynicism by the silence in the house she has been marooned in for 70 years, fearful that her streaming thoughts will freeze. A reversal of the barking dog that awakens the sleepers in the Koran story.I'm sure the names in the story are significant, but could not find online anything that yields their meaning. Help anyone?Final note: Madame X, who read an electronic ARC, mentioned blocks of copy that go on at great length, and copy errors.The blocks of copy in the published edition are internal musings, primarily, especially Fatma's. As for the missing and duplicated words, the publisher Knopf is to be taken to task. Pamuk is a Nobel Laureate and you'd think his publisher could hire a more competent proof reader. That said, the glitches are not frequent enough to intrude on my reading of this wonderful book.
