Review: Honor

Elif Shafak's Honor is not a whodunit--the reader learns who the killer is in the first chapter--but a whydunit that dramatizes the cultural pressure and family dysfunction that might compel an Anglo-Turkish teenager in 1978 London to execute an ancient ritual. Light on gore and rich in psychological complexity, the novel presents an intricate pattern of events (with a dash or two of kismet) to show how a practice as heinous as honor killing could persist across generations and in spite of assimilation.

Shafak (The Bastard of Istanbul) frames Honor as a memoir-in-progress authored by the killer’s sister, who juxtaposes recent events in London with family history dating back to her grandparents' era in rural Anatolia. It's a fascinating portrayal of the misalignment that occurs when constructs from the old country, such as arranged marriage and the maternal favoritism for a firstborn son, are exposed to a more open and egalitarian culture.

Novels about tough social issues can feel schematic, but Shafak gives her characters enough singular motivation to prevent Honor's fictional component from being overwhelmed by its message, and she creates an impressive number of rounded individuals. Two outstanding characters are Pembe Kader (whose name translates as "Pink Destiny") and Jamila Yeter ("Enough Beauty"), twins whose destinies form the backbone of the novel. The scenes of Pembe's struggles as a single mother in London and Jamila's precarious existence as the "Virgin Midwife" in a cabin near the Euphrates River would be worth reading independent from the novel's central theme.

When Shafak does embed a spate of obvious reader education into a male character's interior monologue, the insights offered redeem the soapbox delivery: "Not everyone would understand this, but their honor was all that some men had in this world. The rich could afford to lose and regain their reputation, buying influence as perfunctorily as ordering a new car, but for the rest of the world things were different. The less means a man had, the higher was the worth of his honor."

The compensatory social status conferred by a wife's demure conduct is just one of the causalities Shafak establishes in Honor, a novel that manages to be diverting and full of life while simultaneously analyzing the durability of violent cultural traditions. --Holloway McCandless

Shelf Talker: In a novel spanning three generations, Shafak (The Bastard of Istanbul) delves into the complex circumstances that allow old-country values to distort an Anglo-Turkish family in 1970s London.

Powered by: Xtenit