Review: The Museum of Innocence

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the depth of the Turkish society, Orhan took us.

It's a love story.. well, not precisely.. It's a story about love..especially loving Istanbul.
Kemal bey the thirty-something year old man fell in love with an eighteen year old girl "Füsun" and was confused about giving up on everything he has that seems like a perfect life and go after his love or not.

However, this story is a background to Orhan's perfect narration of the aristocratic class of Istanbul after the calling off of the Ottoman empire and the rise of capitalism and secular appeals which are described as "westernization" of Turkey. So, basically Orhan is telling us historic facts and events in form of a novel.

Don't hang on the love story and enjoy the description of the society, because I did at the first few chapters and I complained it was going on slowly with the incidents of the love story but after that, I realized the beauty of the novel regardless of Kemal bey agony. Orhan is telling the smallest detail in everything and everyone in this novel, it can be irritating and also amusing.
It's important to notice that Kemal bey portrayed the Turk's confused mind and Füsun represented the modern Turkey that was captured into the traditional surrounding mindsets.

The obsessive hoarding in the novel lead to opening the Museum of Innocence in Turkey, and I visited myself last September, it's really beautiful and on each object they wrote down the phrase that was mentioned in the novel about it. Bring your copy if you are going to visit Istanbul because you will guaranteed a free entrance to the museum. And, I found out that there are museums around the world that is keen on representing the normal objects in the country houses in them as was mentioned in this novel.

Back to the novel, I liked the description of Time as he said it and so many other things that I quoted. The story is about Istanbul, love, friendship, family and how was the receiving of religion back then in Turkey.
I loved it and the ending was good.

I highly recommend it.



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