Pamuk is obsessed with colours and colour names, I am obsessed
with Pamuk's writing.
This
novel deals with the story of a young boy (Cem) whose father has abandoned him
and his mother without any plausible explanation. Is it his political leanings
or one of his many mistresses that takes him away from the family? The young
boy is struggling to come to terms with the change is his lifestyle when he and
his mother are abandoned without any solid financial means. Cem spends the rest
of his life – consciously or unconsciously searching for a father figure in his
life. But when in his attempt to earn money for his further education, he turns into
an apprentice for an old well digger, he
does come across such a figure - it is
his turn now to abandon the old man. It feels like he is seeking revenge from
life for being abandoned by abandoning the old man at his most vulnerable stage.
And how does he resolve this guilt that
he carries for the rest of his life? As the
boy Cem grows up in and around Pamuk’s romantic Istanbul, going through college
and life in general, he turns into a young man obsessed with the two stories –
one of Homer’s Oedipus – where Oedipus who is abandoned by his father at birth,
later unknowingly kills his father and marries his own mother to even go ahead
and have children with her. Ultimately when he realizes what he has done, he is
horrified at his own actions eventually kills himself. The second story is of
Rustom and Sohrab – another poignant father son saga in which the father and
son who have been separated early on in life finally meet in a fierce duel – ignorant
of their relation to each other - the son is brutally killed by the father. The
father is filled with remorse when he realizes what he has done but it is too
late. The protagonist Cem is consumed by
these tales of tormented father son relationships as his own psyche gets
drowned in the burden of guilt and anger. The presence of the mysterious red-haired
woman throughout the novel adds intrigue to this fascinating tale. A constant tenor
in the novel seeks to unravel the identity of the red-haired woman – to find
out who she is and what role does she have in the making and unmaking of the
protagonist’s life. Her connection to the lives of Cem, Cem’s father, the
father like figure of the well digger and ultimately Cem’ s son runs through
the novel like an unseen thread – not always smooth but knotted at times yet unbroken.
The
novel explores the Oedipean father-mother-son archetype in a deep narrative
that the reader can easily drown in. Pamuk’s inimitable style of creating intrigue
and mystery makes this a yet another fascinating tale from this modern master
of storytelling. This one deserves a neat 4/5.
