Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 9780593801710
Three people across timeare united by a single drop of water and the stories of an ancientcivilization. As they fight for better lives, they must contend withchallenges from those closest to them as well as society. Author ElifShafak takes readers through a thoughtful, lyrical journey thousandsof years in the making in her newest novel There Are Rivers in theSky.King Ashurbanipal ofMesopotamia is known as one of the most literate rulers of his time.He’s also one of the most ruthless. He has tasked his underlings tosearch far and wide for the retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, eventhough he owns several iterations of the story already. He alsodoesn’t tolerate insolence, having his closest advisor and fatherfigure executed and calling for the brutal plundering, murder, andobliteration of other people. When his own land is attacked, then, itseems like poetic justice.
Witness to all of this isa single drop of water that starts in the sky and lands onAshurbanipal’s head. The drop of water continues its journeythrough centuries and hundreds of cycles of evaporation andprecipitation across lands. Eventually the drop of water, now asnowflake, lands close to the Thames in London.
There, in 1840, KingArthur of the Sewers and Slums is born in a nod to irony. The name isgiven to Arthur by the toshers who scavenge the sludgy, dirty riverfor any little trinkets they can sell to earn a living. Arthur’smother is one of them, and she goes into labor on a particularlyfrigid day in the water. The snowflake lands in Arthur’s mouthmoments after he’s born, sealing him to a fate of wandering.
In Turkey in 2014,nine-year-old Narin, a Yazidi girl, is learning how to put a braveface on lose her hearing. Narin’s grandmother, Besma, wants Narinto be baptized according to the Yazidi tradition in Iraq. Even wordof the rise of a group called ISIS, Besma is sure the gods willprotect them. Narin also faces the reality that in addition to herhearing, her people will lose access to the Tigris. The river isscheduled to be dammed up, and the Yazidi will lose a major landmarkof their birthright.
Back in London in 2018,Zaleekah Clarke has bought a houseboat on the Thames and decided todie there. She’s grateful to her uncle for taking her in when shebecame an orphan in childhood, and she’s worked hard to reach hercurrent role as a hydrologist. But not even living on the water of aworldwide landmark is enough to coax Zaleekah out of her melancholy.A run-in with a book from her home country, however, starts to changeher perspective.
Arthur, Narin, andZaleekah are bound to one another by the precious commodity of waterand the stories it tells and remembers. Arthur fights every day torise above abject poverty and his mother’s addictions. Narin isdesperate to memorize as many sounds as she can before she loses themall. Zaleekah wants someone—anyone—to help her make sense of herlife. The three will find themselves changed forever by the rivers oftheir youth and their memories.
Author Elif Shafak arrestsreaders’ attention and doesn’t release anyone until the end ofthe book. Her turn of phrase is only equaled by the incrediblyambitious premise, tying her three main characters to a seeminglysimple element. By the end of the novel, however, Shafak will havereaders scrutinizing their own relationship with water.
Shafak’s sharp gazeremains trained on her characters, sharing their sorrows and few joysin alternating chapters with laser-like precision. At times, readersmay find themselves drawn to one more than the other. All of them,however, have their place and make an impact.
The only fault in the bookcomes in the last few chapters. Shafak’s leisurely prose takes on aslightly hurried tone. Scenes that glided now rush through theirresolutions, which is a shame. After the emotional journey readerswill take with the three characters, urging them along makes the endfeel hastily assembled as if escaping a deluge of some kind.
Still, the book is amust-read for drawing its connections between an ancient city of thepast and the immediacy of the present. Those who like books thatchallenge them, teach them, and also entertain will enjoy this one. Irecommend readers Bookmark There Are Rivers in the Sky by ElifShafak.