BOOK- THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE
AUTHOR- ELIF SHAFAK
PAGES- 350
BLURB-
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage
children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and
fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella’s life—an emptiness
once filled by love.
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the
thirteenth- century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of
life and love, she is shocked out of herself. Turning her back on her family
she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse,
taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are
heartbreakingly explored…
MY TAKE ON THE BOOK-
Firstly, the cover is really gorgeous and beautiful.
Secondly, if you are lost, looking for answers or if
you want to read some philosophical writings I will suggest you this book
The Forty Rules of Love is a book full of wisdom and
knowledge. It is a novel within a novel. Looking at the title of the book one
may mistake it simply about rules of love between partners but it is something
beyond that. It explores the love in friendship, family, religion and life.
This book
consists of two parallel narratives. The first one is Ella. A bored housewife
who feels stalled despite her gracious suburban life in Northampton,
Massachusetts. Her teenage children are growing away from her and her husband
is distant and unfaithful. Ella’s new job as a reader for a literary agency
introduces her to Sufism through a manuscript she is sent to read which had a
life changing impact on her. And the second one is ‘Sweet Blasphemy’, set in 13th
century, which is about a wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, a mystic Sufi who
thinks he should find a companion to whom he can deliver his knowledge.
(Let me tell you the meaning of Blasphemy- here you
can take it as disrespect or something that is wrong)
Building her whole life around her husband and
children, Ella lacked any survival techniques to help her cope with life’s
hardships on her own. She was not the type to throw caution to the wind. Even
changing her daily coffee brand was a major effort.
Love came to Ella as suddenly and brusquely as if a
stone had been hurled from out of nowhere into the tranquil pond of her life.
As the story unfolds, Ella finds herself mesmerized
with the tale she is currently reading. She felt so engrossed with her work
that she wanted to know about the characters more and more. That’s when she
googled ‘A. Z. Zahara’ the author of the book she was to write a report on. And
to her surprise a personal blog appeared. The blog was titled ‘An Eggshell
Named Life’ she found pictures of different places and underneath one photo it
read:
No
matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel
Incomplete.
It’s like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just
what that something is, most of us never find
out. And of those who do,
even
fewer manage to go out and look for it.
Ella scrolled up and down the webpage and that’s
where she got the e-mail address of Aziz. She noted it down and after a few
days of exchanging e-mails, it became more frequent. It was obvious from the
novel that both of them were in the same page of love. But you never know what
life is going to bring isn’t it?
Baba Zaman was the one who taught Sufism to Shams of
Tabriz. Baba Zaman got a letter from a person which said he was looking for a
companion of Rumi(Maulana Jalal-Uddin).
(At first I thought that Rumi is a female character
in the book, but then I was wrong :D)
Shams
believed he had a special mission in this world, and to this end he wished to
enlighten an enlightened person. Thus, when he got the permission from Baba
Zaman if he could go for the mission, without thinking of any consequences he
went forward to an unknown land of Konya.
The author nailed it narrating the ‘sweet blasphemy’
the way it was shown in many perspectives of Shams, sometimes a beggar, the
zealot, Rumi, the prostitute or even the family of Rumi. The novel beautifully portrayed
the love of Rumi for Shams and the hatred of the townspeople and Rumi’s family
towards Shams.
Kimya didn’t deserve the sorrows. My heart really
bled while reading her part. Kerra too was annoyed and not satisfied with the
change that Rumi was having in him due to the influence of Shams.
Ella later abandons her family and follows the path with
Aziz. But that happiness didn’t last long. Aziz died after almost two years and
his body was buried at Konya, where he wished it would be.
What happened to Aziz? How did he die? You have to
read the book to know the details.
Some of the lines I liked the most in this book-
- The past is a whirlpool. If you let it dominate your present moment, it will suck you in.
- Life is temporary loan and this world is nothing but a sketchy imagination of reality.
- Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.
- The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves within us, in endless spirals.
- In chess, just as life, there were moves
you made because they were the right thing to do.
This book is something that will make you feel good.
But again, it depends on the choice of your reading.
P.S.- This book won’t make you feel sad or low. Instead, it
will make you stand in the sea of reality and teach you things that will
provide you a sense of realization of everything that relates to you and your
life.
And yes,
forty rules are there but they aren’t just the rules of love, it includes life,
religion, patience and God.
Overall rating- 4.7/5
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