A review of the best-selling novel “There Are Rivers In The Sky” by Elif Shafak
I had not heard of this book, or even of the Turkish-British author, before the novel was gifted to me by a good female friend, but I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read and a really impressive piece of work.
Following a introduction set in Ancient Mesopotamia, the hugely ambitious narrative features three characters from different times and places whose stories intersect in all sorts of ways: Arthur, who lives from 1840-1876, rising from destitution in Victorian London to becoming an acclaimed expert on the ruins of Nineveh (a person loosely based on an actual historical figure called George Smith); Narin, a nine year old Yazidi from Turkey in 2014 who is learning about her culture as she is going deaf; and Zaleekhah, a 31 year old hydrologist working in London in 2018 who has just left her husband to live on a house boat. The novel flips from one character to another and back again over almost 500 pages.
There is much to commend in this work: the text is shaped by formidable research, with rich and erudite descriptions in beautiful language, littered with wonderful similes and metaphors. Recurrent themes are water, rivers, Nineveh, lamassu, cuneiform, and most importantly the Yazidi.
However, too much of the dialogue is clumsy and frequently expository. Most seriously, the allusions to water are excessive and often contrived and the author appears to regard the substance as not just mysterious but mystical. The flirtation with the notion of ‘water memory’ and the suggestion that a drop of water can retain its essential character over space and time go beyond literary licence to something approaching pseudo-science. This 2024 novel by Elif Shafak reminds me a little of the 2004 “Cloud Atlas” by David Michell but, in the latter work, the inter-locking lives are connected more subtly.