Turks may deny they massacred Armenians in the Genocide of 1915 but this enmity still impacts lives, says Shafak’s novel. She explores this theme through the story of two girls, in different continents and yet deeply connected.

There’s Asya, the girl with no father. She’s born to beautiful Zeliha and grows up in Istanbul in a houseful of women where the men are all dead (of the evil eye?). Asya hates her history with the same fervour as she hates her ballet lessons, bunking ballet to hang out at the Café Kundera.

Then there’s Armanoush, the half-American, half-Armenian girl with no history, or at least a desperately muddled one. She has an Armenian father, only he’s divorced and lives on the West Coast. Mom ‘Rose’ has remarried, neatly and nastily, the primeval Armenian enemy— a Turk. It’s like giving a half-Jewish child a Nazi step-father and Rose has well and truly had her revenge on her estranged Armenian husband.

Armanoush may live in America but she is preoccupied with her past. At the online chatroom she hangs out in, she signs in as ‘Madame My–Exiled-Soul’ and exchanges exiled Armenian angst with ‘Baron Baghdassarian’, ‘Lady Peacock’ and ‘Miserable Co-Existence’. It is a preoccupation that will eventually lead her to Istanbul and to Asya and her family.

But once in Istanbul, she finds no memories of Armenian annihilation seem to survive. Instead the young trade ‘dead end nothings’ with each other as Asya hangs out at Café Kundera with ‘Dipsomaniac Cartoonist’, the ‘Closeted Gay Columnist’ and the ‘Exceptionally Untalented Poet’. The Turks, it appears to the angry Asya, massacred the Armenians and have now forgotten all about it.

Elusive happiness
Can the under-the-Turkish-carpetness of things make for happiness? Clearly not says Shafak. As if history could be denied. Happiness of a sort only comes in the novel after a drastic denouement of betrayals and guilty secrets.

The book scores because it comes up with a story that is deeply discussable, drawing on very real historical events. But it is disappointing in the clunkiness of its writing. Shafak veers between an effort at witty, chick lit and an attempt at exotic magic realism. Neither takes off.

At the opening of the book for instance, when Zeliha goes to the doctor’s office for the abortion-that-never–happened she reflects, “The Copper Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: When harassed on the street, you’d better forget about the incident as soon as you are on your way again, since to recall the incident all day long will only further wrack your nerves.”

Years later rebellious daughter Asya will reflect similarly, “Article Eight: If between society and self there exists a cavernous ravine and upon it only a wobbly bridge, you might as well burn that bridge and stay on the side of the Self, safe and sound, unless it is the ravine you are after.”

But a Marquez, Shafak is not, despite obvious comparisons in passages like this one where Armanoush who is visiting Istanbul in search of her history, describes host Asya’s family to her online friends— “There is something surreal here. Irrationality is part of the everyday rationale. I feel like I am in a Gabriel Garcia novel. One of the sisters is a tattoo artist; another sister is a clairvoyant; one other is a national history teacher; and the fourth is an eccentric wallflower, or a full-time cuckoo.” Colourful certainly, much like most of the novel, and yet contrived and often overpowering in its expose-the-Turks agenda.