Book Review: THE ARCHITECT'S APPRENTICE by Elif Shafak

The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"You think God is similar to you. Angry, rigid, eager for revenge... whereas I say: instead of believing that the worst in humans can be found in God, believe that the best in God can be found in humans."

Part love story, part mystery, this historical reimagining of the Ottoman empire at its height under Suleiman the Magnificent was a queer but apt choice for December 24 reading. I never would have thought, from the blurb, that this book was appropriate for our family's situation on Christmas eve, but it really was! Proof that sometimes books find us when we need them most.

A dear friend has been reading almost all of Elif Shafak's books and posting about them nonstop. Now that I've read my first Shafak, I think I begin to see why.

This novel was about one of the great architect Mimar Sinan's apprentices, who enters Istanbul as a boy and spends his long life at the mercy of Fate, with his trusty white elephant at his side.

(In a thrilling case of literary intersections with real life, Mimar Siman was also the architect who built the Bridge on the Drina, which is also the title of a book I loved, by Ivo Andrić!! And of that book, Elif Shafak said that when she finished, something inside her had shifted forever.)

What is the point of working so hard, when one can be imprisoned or killed, or one's life's work destroyed, at the mere whim of men? What is the point of loving completely, when the beloved is doomed to die anyway?

The answer, perhaps, lies in this: "Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories."

Shafak's truth is this: "I cannot prevent people from destroying. All I can do is keep building."

We are all architects of the great domes of our lives. Shafak made sixteenth-century Istanbul her venue but the characters' stories ring with the truth of universality. We cannot escape the slings and arrows of misfortune, but Shafak's book encourages us to try and build a life of beauty and purpose anyway.

"Life was the sum of choices one did not make; the paths yearned for but not taken." I'm glad my friends chose to share Shafak with me, I shall continue to look for her other books!

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