While Eylul assumes she has all the time in the world to consider her choices, her 49-year-old mother drowns in a swimming pool, and the decision is made
When Eylul, a young Turkish law student at the University of Bonn, completes her doctorate summa cum laude, she has two wonderful options ahead of her: Several professors at the university clamour to hire her as an assistant, and her mother, who has a flourishing law firm in Istanbul, urges her to join the family business.
While Eylul assumes she has all the time in the world to consider her choices, her 49-year-old mother drowns in a swimming pool, and the decision is made. While the police report calls it an accident, there are several strange things about the “accident” that make Eylul wonder if it was murder or suicide. For starters, high alcohol levels were found in her mother’s body, but her mother rarely drank.
Eylul starts working at her mother’s firm, but before she settles down, she finds a passionate love letter in her mother’s handwriting to someone called Izmirli. It is at this point that Eylul’s emotions spin out of control and the story really begins. She cannot handle the fact that her mother had betrayed her beloved father, and perhaps this Izmirli chap murdered her. Unfortunately, her father has been in a vegetative state after a stroke a few years earlier, so Eylul has no one to discuss this with. She wonders if her father’s stroke been caused by the discovery of this affair, and the love she had for her mother is now tainted by bitterness. Eylul is determined to find out more, but the more she finds, the more questions arise. Almost every chapter ends with a cliff hanger. It’s almost like a melodramatic soap opera catering to Eastern sensibilities. In the backdrop, Eylul’s father’s family fortunes sink, and the trappings of her privileged background are stripped away. Drama after drama. She then visits the city of Izmir where her maternal grandfather lives, and discovers more clues!
What is particularly enjoyable about the book are the descriptions of modern, buzzing Istanbul, and comparatively laid-back but still lively Izmir, particularly the neighbourhood in which Eylul’s mother had a secret flat.
The character sketches of the people Eylul associates with are well-fleshed — in fact the only character we have trouble understanding is Eylul. All that awe we felt for her academic achievements melt away as she shirks work, and focuses on finding Izmirli instead. We don’t really know who she is and what she stands for until a sharp, gasp-inducing twist at the end of the novel.
Does she find her mother’s lover? Did her mother actually betray her father? Was her mother murdered? Chances are, you will be just as obsessed by these mysteries as Eylul is.
Izmirli My Last Love
By Firat Sunel
Penguin
pp. 636; Rs 599
