Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s sixth novel translated into English centres around a curious conceit: throughout the story, Kemal, the narrator, periodically draws the reader’s attention to certain objects – a clock, a letter, a teacup, or even a cigarette butt – and explains why he is choosing to display or exhibit them. Each one evokes a fleeting memory or feeling, they are physical footnotes to a life-defining affair. For mementos to have meaning, something must have been lost, so it is clear from the very beginning that we will watch a tragedy unfold. What’s more, this hoarding and cataloguing of objects betrays an obsessive edge to the love on offer – possession being nine tenths of it – that suggests that tragedy was an inescapable outcome.

Kemal is a member of Istabul’s extravagantly wealthy elite, betrothed if not yet formally engaged to Sibel, who is from a less affluent but still respectable family and  is admired for having studied in Paris. In 1970s Turkey, where the story begins, sex before marriage is still very much taboo for women, but Sibel is willing to defy tradition with Kemal so long as she is assured that they will marry and soon. A few months before the engagement party, Kemal encounters Fusan, who works in a upmarket boutique and is a distant cousin of his. In a confused wrangle over a gift for Sibel that needs to be returned to the shop, Kemal and Fusan agree to meet at an unused apartment owned by Kemal’s mother, where they kiss and, the next day, where Kemal takes or she offers him her virginity. A relationship begins under the cover of maths tuition, but soon Fusan is seeking assurance that Kemal is not also sleeping with Sibel. When Kemal invites her to the engagement party, Fusan learns from employees of his company of his trysts with Sibel on the couch in his office, resigns from her job at the boutique and vanishes without trace from his life.

Kemal, whose relationship with Sibel is beginning to unravel, is devastated by the loss of his young mistress and can only comfort himself by returning to the apartment again and again to caress and sniff the sheets and the personal effects of hers that he has already begun to hoard. Months later, Sibel having fled to France, Kemal receives a dinner invitation from Fusan’s parents. When he discovers that she has been married in haste to a young film director, he beings a nine-year long campaign, with the blessing of her mother, to win her back, shunning society, neglecting his business interests and becoming a general figure of fun in the process.

Where The Museum of Innocence scores highest is in its panoramic and in depth depictions of Turkish society in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It customs and traditions, creeping westernisation, political upheaval and football and film cultures are all evoked with consummate skill and it is certainly a novel that readers who are not particularly familiar with Turkey could learn a great deal from.  The story of Kemal and Fusan’s troubled relationship represents an apposite indictment of sexual inequality and the way in which placing value on a woman’s virginity and honour risks devaluing women as individuals. Unfortunately, although it is hard to fault the writing, there is something a little bit dreary about it. Perhaps the plot is not quite varied enough to justify the novel’s length, settling too easily into patterns of monotony. Ultimately, it feels as if The Museum of Innocence is a book that is easier to admire than it is to enjoy.

Reviewed by Paul Engles

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