The Red Haired Woman (by Orhan Pamuk)

 

                    

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.