10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World – Elif Shafak (2019)

At my suggestion, my book group chose to read 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, in July. This is only the second novel by this acclaimed author that I have read – the first being The Bastard of Istanbul, last year. Now I am left wondering why I waited so long to acquaint myself with this wonderful writer. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, it may well have won in any other year, but had the misfortune to be up against Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood.

Told in three sections; Mind, Body, Soul – the novel takes its premise from the idea, that there have been recorded instances of the brain continuing to show activity for up to 10 minutes 38 seconds.

“Grief is a swallow,’ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.”

By rights, I suppose this should be a deeply depressing book, unbearably sad – and yet it isn’t at all – and considering the very dark themes that is some achievement. It is testament to the author’s skill that, while sometimes very poignant, this is a novel that is surprisingly uplifting in places. Elif Shafak breathes such life into her characters, that she makes them, for the reader, as real as the people next door. Each character finely drawn, distinct and vivid. I loved this book so much it will definitely be a contender for my end of year list. It is extraordinarily well written, tender, and unforgettable. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The novel opens with the main characters death – Tequila Leila as she is known – killed, shoved into a metal bin on the outskirts of Istanbul. After Leila’s death each minute – for precisely 10 minutes 38 seconds – her consciousness recalls a sensuous memory. Memories of her childhood, and of the life she lived in the street of brothels where she worked.  

“In the sky high above, a sliver of yesterday’s moon was visible, bright and unreachable, like the vestige of a happy memory. She was still part of this world, and there was still life inside her, so how could she be gone? How could she be no more, as though she were a dream that fades at the first hint of daylight?”

Leila was born in 1947 in the city of Van, the daughter of a man with two wives. She died in Istanbul in 1990 – fiercely loved by five amazing friends, the custodian of a deaf cat called Mr Chaplin. The life she lived in-between those two events is bittersweet, sometimes enraging, but often, and surprisingly full of love.

As Leila’s life ebbs away, her five friends, are desperately trying to find her. Their loyalty to her and love for her was ultimately what makes this book such a delightful experience.

The city where Leila was born and raised is a long way from Istanbul, she grew up in a house of secrets. Her young mother having suffered many miscarriages before she came along, was fragile, dominated by her husband and his first wife. Leila’s brother born some years later; has Downs Syndrome – Leila adores him.

“Her mother had once told her that childhood was a big, blue wave that lifted you up, carried you forth and, just when you thought it would last forever, vanished from sight. You could neither run after it nor bring it back. But the wave, before it disappeared, left a gift behind – a conch shell on the shore. Inside the seashell were stored all the sounds of childhood.”

As she grows up, her father becomes more and more religious, her life narrows, he places strictures on her life outside of the home, and she struggles to spend time with even her best friend. She is sexually abused by an uncle – the first step on the road which leads her to the street of brothels in Istanbul.

Leila recalls her optimistic running away to Istanbul – and how things didn’t work out as she had hoped, but how she couldn’t go back. She remembers smells, sounds, tastes and emotions from various parts of her forty three years on earth, she remembers, falling in love, her great happiness. Her mind travels back to how she met her five great friends; Sinan, Nostalgia Nalan, Jameela, Zaynab122 and Hollywood Humeyra, outsiders like Leila they exist on the fringes of Istanbul society. Only Sinan, Leila’s childhood friend, who followed her to Istanbul leads a conventional life – though it is a life of two halves – his family, knowing nothing of his friends and how very much they mean to him. Leila, Nalan, Sinan, Jameela, Zaynab and Humeyra are stronger than family – the best part of the book – and I don’t want to give spoilers, is what these five people do for Leila after she has died.

In many ways a difficult book to write about without some mild spoilers, but reading it is a whole different experience – such a good choice for our book group, if I do say so myself. A novel full of feminist themes – it made for a brilliant discussion.