"Three Daughters of Eve" by Elif Shafak

Three Daughters of Eve is a new novel by Elif Shafak, an acclaimed Turkish author whose writing is very poetic and who is not afraid to tackle difficult issues. The novel alternates between two timelines: Istanbul in 2016 and Oxford in 2000-2002. The main character is Peri, a thirty-six year-old Turkish housewife and a mother of three. She and her teenage daughter are in the car on their way to a lavish party at a seaside mansion, when her purse is snatched from the backseat by a pair of street kids. Peri impulsively leaves the car and gives chase to the kids, ending up in a dark alley where she almost gets raped. I must mention that she acts very out of character – she is normally very timid and reserved. Somehow, at that moment she snaps and what follows makes her think back to her years at Oxford, when young and impressionable, she became infatuated with a college professor.

Overall, the storyline was ok. Shafak does a great job building up tension with foreshadowing and expectation of a big reveal. However, the reveal itself was a bit disappointing. It did not go the way I had expected and I thought it was unreasonable to blame Peri for Professor Azur’s demise when she clearly had nothing to do with it. She did not testify against him, she just never showed up for the hearing. She was also very fragile and mentally unstable at that point, so equating failure to show up with admittance of inappropriate relationship is quite a leap here.

The pacing of the novel was also uneven. We spend a lot of time in Peri’s head, with her musings about God, and detailed accounts of childhood memories. The narrative for 90% of the book is from her point of view. Then quite unexpectedly the perspective shifts at the very end to Professor Azur, and the floodgates burst open with a torrent of information about him and his personal life.

Finally, I was not sure about the title. It sort of leads one to believe that it is about three women, whereas in reality it is all about Peri. Shirin and Mona (especially the latter) do not have much of a role in the novel. They just represent the polar opposites of what a modern Muslim woman is like. Shirin is ultra liberal and anti-religious while Mona is a practicing Muslim. Peri falls somewhere in between. She is cautiously agnostic, but chooses to call herself confused. She never really comes to terms with being agnostic. When we meet her in 2016, she is just as uncomfortable in her skin as she was in her early 20s. And perhaps, Shafak gives us a glimpse of how a Muslim woman feels nowadays: guilty about not practicing her religion and yet always striving to be modern and free.

This leads me to the one thing that I really liked about this book. I thought the discussion of religion, its role in the modern-day Turkey as well as the overall perspective of Turks on the EU, democracy, gender roles and Islam were excellent. This was the strongest aspect of the novel in my opinion. Overall, I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars. I liked it, but it could have been better.

I received an e-ARC from Netgalley. The book is officially out in the US tomorrow, December 5, 2017.