The Forty Rules of Love : To Read or Not to Read!

Posted On February 14, 2022

Hi Readers! Happy Valentine’s Day! I wish all of you love and happiness. When it comes to books, I do not enjoy reading romantic books. Most of the times, they disappoint me with their cliché troops, washed out main characters, no heat, almost a laughable story & a predictable ending. This Valentine’s Day, I am sharing a review of The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. Many people assume this book to be about love, when in fact it is about love for spirituality & the religion of love. But, here I am leveraging a common misconception about the book & sharing the book review! This is an unpopular opinion because I did not like The Forty Rules of Love.

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz—that together incarnate the poet’s timeless message of love.

Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams’s search for Rumi and the dervish’s role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams’s lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi’s story mir­rors her own and that Zahara—like Shams—has come to set her free.

~~WRITING STYLE~~

Before I read this book, I had this gut feeling that I will love Elif Shafak’s books. I had a feeling that the writing will be poetic, brilliant, emotional & impacting. When I started reading The Forty Rules of Love, I did not feel any of these things, and naturally I was heartbroken while ironically reading about love. This book is classified as historical fiction. But, in fact, it is more like fiction that reads like non-fiction.  And, the genre of nonfiction is spirituality, no less. Would I have picked up a nonfiction book about spirituality? Of course not. That is why, it felt like I was tricked into it.

Other than all the endless talks about spirituality, religion, God & so on, I was also entirely disappointed with the narration. This might have been the first book I read in a long time with a first-person narration. I did not enjoy this & I enjoyed it far less because it was first person narration by at least 10 to 15 characters in alternating chapters. Do I want to read about a beggar’s or a drunk’s or a prostitute’s or even a security guard’s prejudiced first-person narration that adds nothing much to the overall story? Of course not. To add to this, every single character’s dialogue, thoughts & actions are similar. You literally cannot see a difference in the writing style from one character to the next. So, yes, this was a big deal breaker for me. The writing which I imagined to be wonderful turned out to be below average.

Lastly, the whole book was too preachy. When I understood that these are actually the forty rules of the religion of love linked to spirituality, I was not pleased. Even apart from those forty rules, a lot of chapters are just ‘gyaan’. Colour me disinterested. Basically, if I wanted to read some preachy nonfiction spiritual book with no characters, then I would look in that category. For staunch historical fiction readers, this book has to be a let-down.

~~THE STORY~~

Sometimes, even with a bad narration or an average writing, there is a chance to win over the readers if you have a compelling story. We have two parallel story lines in this book. The main story line is of Ella, who is an unsatisfied wife & mother of three, leading a cliché life. You can easily predict how the story will end for her in a very Eat-Pray-Love kind of a way. She has a job in a publishing house who send her a book to review. The story in the book is the second story line between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. This story was mildly interesting, but still the whole book did not appeal to me.

~~SUFISM~~

I think that the title of the novel is misleading. Even though it does include some areas about love for yourself or your partner or close ones, it is largely about love for something you cannot see. When it comes to religion of Islam or Sufism, I do not have any knowledge at all. So, I will not comment on it vis-à-vis its content in the book. But, if I had known before hand that it is heavily leaning towards these topics, I might not have read it at all. The simple reason is that I like my books fiction & not because of any religion bias. It’s my own fault for never reading the blurb, but even the blurb does not do justice to what is inside the book.

~~THE FORTY RULES~~

When I was in school, we had rules. When I joined an MNC, we had rules. I have some rules to align myself to my goals. Guess what? All these rules are under 10 words. The point of rules is to make them precise. In The Forty Rules of Love, the rules go on & on for up to 7 to 8 lines of the book. I thought that forty was a bit excessive for a 354-page book. I had reached the stage where whenever a new rule came up, I did an eye-roll, because I did not care. It should be the opposite. As I mentioned above that this book is preachy & these excess of rules told in excess of words does not make it any better.

In a nutshell, I did not care at all for this book. I was, of course, immensely sad that I did not like my first Shafak novel, but there are many more of hers, which I will pick wisely. Maybe some books will miss, but I hope most will hit. Anyway, I think you should read The Forty Rules of Love if you want to read about spirituality, God & the love within ourselves. If you like reading fiction which reads like nonfiction, then you can try out this book. If you are used to reading historical action with memorable characters, strong story line & historical events with action & war, then this book is not for you. I have rated Elif Shafak’s ‘The Forty Rules of Love’ at 2/5 stars.

Until next time,