This quirky tale also deals with balancing motherhood and writing. Drawing from her Turkish heritage, Shafak posits the existence of an inner harem of tiny women. Each with a different perspective and personality, the various "Thumbelinas" quarrel and argue, making life difficult and confusing for their hostess. The only exception is the Sufi Dame Dervish, who points out that "we are all reflections of you," and favours a peace treaty among them. Yet this is not easy to achieve. "To be human...means to live with an orchestra of conflicting voices and mixed emotions," says Shafak.
At the onset of pregnancy, two new Thumbelinas arrive, shocking her into the realization that she's been suppressing them to the point of not knowing of their existence. To date, she has been focused on writing, which comes with its own exigencies, as she explains. "There is an idea buzzing in my head but just what it is I cannot tell until I put it in writing."
Trying to distract her from her maternal impulses, the dominant Miss Ambitious Chekhovian leads Elif to a Brain Tree, climbs on a branch and "pouts like a dictator assessing his people's intelligence before starting to lecture them." This is one of Shafak's many snide comments about politics. Indeed, she was taken to court while pregnant for words she had written in a work of fiction, though the charges were dropped at the request of the prosecutor.
After her daughter is born, postpartum depression arrives in the form of a bespectacled Djinni called Lord Poton. Like the tiny quarreling internal women, this character provides a certain humour. When she queries his non-traditional appearance, he informs her his kind have kept up with the times. No more lamps, and this genie watches his figure -- he visits the gym regularly.
Meanwhile, as the author negotiates the phases of pregnancy and then childbirth, we learn how other female authors have managed to cope with the drive to motherhood superimposed on the impulse to write. Some have struggled mightily to balance the demands of children and the life of the mind, some have decided to remain childless, and others have written on, without undue bother, through their childrearing years.
For a women, says Shafak, the issue of "permission to tell the story--be it personal or familial--is particular to women writers around the world." For me this claim resonated with truth.
Odd facts I learned from this book include the fact that George Eliot so despised the contemporary trope of "women's literature" that in 1856 she penned an article called "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," which classified and described the frothy, the prosy, the pious and the pedantic. Before reading Shafak's book, I was unaware that Eliot was buried in a special section of the cemetery reserved for dissenters -- in this case, the word "special" did not confer approval.
The author tells us a great deal about the personal lives and struggles of a host of women writers, from Jane Austen to Sophia Tolstoy to Alice Walker. In youth, Shafak admits, she had no interest in understanding the world, only in changing it. Having once cloaked herself in isms, she describes Japanese and Turkish feminists who preceded her, including Adalet Agaoglu and Sevgi Soysal.
The meditation on mirrors was fascinating, too; I finally understood the old Turkish folk beliefs that the presence in Turkish homes of beautifully decorated silver-framed mirrors hung facing the wall.
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