The Bastard of Istabul By Elif Shafak

Among four of the Elif Shafak's books which I read and Three which I finished this  was the most disappointing one. The story does not make any sense whatsoever. She is like a history teacher and this is a history book; talking about Turkish and Armanian people and the challenges and conflicts between them. She brags and brags about how Armanian people have been wronged by Turkish army in 1915 and how they have been forced to leave their homes...

    The characters in this book are the worst of all time. A bunch of cynical, unhappy and ungrateful morons. There are two main characters; Asya and Armanoush(amy). You might be wondering who was the bastard of  Istanbul; spoiler alert, it is Asya. She is nineteen years old now the age her mother Zeliha was when she had her. Her mother was a rebellious girl always trying to defy her mother; during one of her rebellions  she ended up with a bastard child in her womb. Although she tells no one about who the hell the father was, not even to her daughter Asya. Asya instead of learning something from her mother's mistakes turns out to be worse than her. She also sleeps with whoever comes along. In one point she ends up having an affair with a married man twice her age. She smokes ferociously. 

     Armanoush on the other hand is a very nice girl in compare to Asya. She is a book reader which she does more frequently than anything else. She is half American and half Armanian. She is Armainan from her father's side and American from her mother's. She struggles between her mother and her father's family who want her to be completely Armanian. Her parents get divorce when she is just a toddler. Her mother marries again with a Turkish extremely Introvert guy. But her father never marries again. She tries to understand her family's and her people's  history and all the misery that have befallen on Armanian people in Turkey. She can't find any sense of self between her American and Armanian sides. She doesn't seem to be able to have a self identification. One day she decides to travel to Turkey and search for identity or clarification or something. She knows that her step father has a family in Istanbul Turkey. So she travels there without informing any of her parents about her trip. 

    How are Asya and Armanoush related? 

     They seem to be related in two ways ; first, they both are utterly ungrateful for all the blessings they have been given. Second Armanoush's step father is Asya's long gone Uncle. He goes to USA for his studies and never comes back ever. He also despised his family and all the miseries related to it. 

    Apparently in Asya's family there is a curse that men of the family die in an early age with aincomprehensible and unexpected reasons. That's is why there was no men in Asya's home and her only uncle lived far far away from them. 

    Asya lives with her mother whom she calls untie and her three unties( her mother's sisters), her grandma and her great grandma. They are a bunch of unhappy individuals. I just could not understand, despite of all this unhappiness why the hell they live together. Asya hates her family and everyone in it. But still with her bitterness she lives with them, acting like a rebellious  daughter. They always criticize each other in most of the topics. That is why I hated the story. She is a big girl, if she is unsatisfied she can move out and live on her own but not she has to live with her four weird unties and hate herself and the society. She hates to live in Istanbul, I wonder what would have been her reaction had she been living in Afghanistan or Yemen. Armanoush is same, big girl practically more than an adult hates to live with her mother but she still does and every in way possible criticizes her life. Ungrateful punks. 

    So Armanoush arrives in Turkey Istanbul and everyone in Asya's only females family loves her. She tries to find answers for her queries but ironically unlike her no body gives a crap about history here. During her stay a lot of discussion about history occurs between Asya and the people she met with; all equally ridiculous. Writer thinks her book is a historic non fiction, bragging about Turks and Armanians. You know what fuck them both. who gives a crap about what happened a hundred years ago in Turkey. If I wanted to learn about history I would have read a history book. 

    Characters are too shallow and creepy. You can't get to attach with any of them. I flipped through multiple pages due to it's boring and meaningless descriptions. The writer writes like ten pages about each of her characters, and there are so many. If you think about it there is no story at all it is just a description of history in the farm of a short story which includes just a trip from USA to Turkey. 

    When I first started reading it, due to it's extra descriptions of it's characters I got a feeling that it's gonna suck, which it did. When you  have a good story you don't waste pages and pages of your book describing about your ludicrous characters. 

    Elif Shafak even though she is  one of my favorites but this time she disappointed me very badly.  
    Well! all and all I just wasted a couple of hours of my life...... and the story sucked so hard. After 70% of the book I could not continue. It was too much bullshit. I already have enough of that in real life. 

Some of the near to nice lines from this book...

# "You see, unlike is the movies, there is no THE END sing flashing at the end of book. When I've read a book, I don't feel like I've finished anything. So I start a new one."

# "Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find someone who is willing to date so many people in one person."

# "Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge."

# "Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off on drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one is smaller."

# "The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children." 

# "Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced."

# "Mourning is like virginity. You should give it to the one who deserves it most."

# "That was the one thing about rain that likened it to sorrow; You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant guch, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched."

# "It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature that all the adults around...
 But the problem is that they want me to become everything they themselves could not accomplish in life..... As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time."

# "It never took her long to darken any conversation, as from birth she was inclined to see misery in each and every story, and to fabricate some when there was none."

# "That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us."

# "Once there was, one there wasn't. God's creatures were as plentiful as grains and talking too much was a sin."

# "There is no together anymore. Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in different directions, you cannot put it back together."

# "We cannot abandon this rabbit hole of fear of a traumatic encounter with our won culture."

stay safe and read more...