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2.25k reviews for:
قواعد العشق الأربعون: The Forty Rules of Love
جلال الدين الرومي, Elif Shafak, خالد الجبيلي
3.87 AVERAGE
2.25k reviews for:
قواعد العشق الأربعون: The Forty Rules of Love
جلال الدين الرومي, Elif Shafak, خالد الجبيلي
3.87 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
leuk spiriwiri boek, oprecht interessante filosofie
I am not ready to give up on Elif Shafak. She is so smart and has such interesting ideas, but I have found both books I have read of hers to suffer from dull, uninteresting prose and simplification of character and theme. Both of these books, The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love, Shafak wrote in English. I will read translations of her Turkish works before deciding that her spark just doesn't shine for me.
Like Bastard, Forty Rules starts with the great idea of interleaving the stories of two different people to illuminate a larger point. In Forty Rules, the stories connect not in space and time, but on a spiritual plane; the character of Aziz in the modern story is in a sense narrating the historical story of Shams and Rumi to the modern Ella, to bring her to a newly awakened sense of spiritual understanding.
Such a great idea, so many missteps in execution, that the book is more exasperating than inspiring. Its two spiritual teachers, Shams and Aziz, are cloyingly beatific fonts of equally cloying aphorisms about love and truth and self and God. (Shams is especially irritating, because after being that hackneyed angel who treats beggars and prostitutes with respect no one else will afford them, looks lepers in the eye, etc., he is inexplicably horrible to his own young wife, who worships him, berating her for her attempts to please him and never explaining to her why he rejects her.) Rumi himself is more or less a cipher, not so much a person as a vessel for Shams's enlightenment. Aziz, too, is a caricature rather than a personality, the embodiment of the self-important western liberal laying claim to eastern spirituality. He is the sort of person we make fun of in real life, and as a romantic hero, he is rather a joke.
And as for Ella, her perfectly ordinary midlife crisis is entirely believable, if not insightfully illuminated. But her being snookered into abandoning her family (especially her vulnerable young teenage daughter with an eating disorder) by the platitude-spewing Orientalist punchline that is Aziz is just pathetic, even tragic. We are not given much from Aziz's point of view of what he sees in Ella, but perhaps more-enlightened-than-thou folk like him are really just satisfied to have a rapt audience.
There is a cynical reading of this book that might suggest that enlightened spirituality is empty and self-indulgent, a cautionary tale against being seduced by its pretty words and arrogant purveyors and utterly impracticable "rules", but I don't think that was what Shafak had in mind. I think she just failed, in my case, to open my eyes to why I should find any inspiration in the nihilist and self-absorbed attitudes of people like Shams and Aziz. Their notion of relinquishing the self in the love of God seems also to include abandoning one's responsibilities and commitments to others, and that is not a spirituality I will ever be able to get behind.
Like Bastard, Forty Rules starts with the great idea of interleaving the stories of two different people to illuminate a larger point. In Forty Rules, the stories connect not in space and time, but on a spiritual plane; the character of Aziz in the modern story is in a sense narrating the historical story of Shams and Rumi to the modern Ella, to bring her to a newly awakened sense of spiritual understanding.
Such a great idea, so many missteps in execution, that the book is more exasperating than inspiring. Its two spiritual teachers, Shams and Aziz, are cloyingly beatific fonts of equally cloying aphorisms about love and truth and self and God. (Shams is especially irritating, because after being that hackneyed angel who treats beggars and prostitutes with respect no one else will afford them, looks lepers in the eye, etc., he is inexplicably horrible to his own young wife, who worships him, berating her for her attempts to please him and never explaining to her why he rejects her.) Rumi himself is more or less a cipher, not so much a person as a vessel for Shams's enlightenment. Aziz, too, is a caricature rather than a personality, the embodiment of the self-important western liberal laying claim to eastern spirituality. He is the sort of person we make fun of in real life, and as a romantic hero, he is rather a joke.
And as for Ella, her perfectly ordinary midlife crisis is entirely believable, if not insightfully illuminated. But her being snookered into abandoning her family (especially her vulnerable young teenage daughter with an eating disorder) by the platitude-spewing Orientalist punchline that is Aziz is just pathetic, even tragic. We are not given much from Aziz's point of view of what he sees in Ella, but perhaps more-enlightened-than-thou folk like him are really just satisfied to have a rapt audience.
There is a cynical reading of this book that might suggest that enlightened spirituality is empty and self-indulgent, a cautionary tale against being seduced by its pretty words and arrogant purveyors and utterly impracticable "rules", but I don't think that was what Shafak had in mind. I think she just failed, in my case, to open my eyes to why I should find any inspiration in the nihilist and self-absorbed attitudes of people like Shams and Aziz. Their notion of relinquishing the self in the love of God seems also to include abandoning one's responsibilities and commitments to others, and that is not a spirituality I will ever be able to get behind.
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I always want to annotate my books, mark lines I enjoyed, write notes about my thoughts and tab my favourite pages. When I really enjoy a book, you can tell because the only evidence that I've read it ends up being a bent (not cracked) spine. There are so many lines in this book that I think I would have underlined and tabbed, but it was so immersive that I really couldn't bring myself to pause. I'll just have to reread it again at some point.
This is my second book by Elif Shafak that I've read and she really!!! I was so immersed I shed some tears. She writes with so much compassion. She also has such great mastery over her form - the short chapters and multiple characters POVs somehow all blend so well to create a complete story and the jumping between present and story is seamless.
This is my second book by Elif Shafak that I've read and she really!!! I was so immersed I shed some tears. She writes with so much compassion. She also has such great mastery over her form - the short chapters and multiple characters POVs somehow all blend so well to create a complete story and the jumping between present and story is seamless.
slow-paced
Maybe i was too young to be reading this but i found it boring unfortunately. Nice characters and narration but it was confusing for 16 yr old me to follow