The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (Book Review by Mohit Rathore)

 📍 The Forty Rules of Love contains two intertwined stories: Sweet Blasphemy, which narrates the relationship between Rumi and Shams as written by Aziz Z. Zahara, a self-proclaimed Sufism follower, and Ella's story, a reader who has taken the job of reading the book, and making a report on it, that is Sweet Blasphemy. As soon as she starts reading the book she feels that the author has written this seeing her situation. Ella is married to David. She is soon going to turn forty, has three kids. 

📍 The book emphasizes Sufism's importance in understanding different perspectives, and the narrative shifts from the main characters to other individuals such as beggars, innkeepers, novices, prostitutes, guards, Rumi's family, and others.

📍 Although The Forty Rules of Love focuses on the importance of loving God, some of the rules felt forced into the plot.

📍 First I'd like to point out things I didn't like in the book:- 

1. I couldn't believe Kimya would think like this of Shams. She is a kid and the first time she meets Shams (a Sufi), talks about a verse she wasn't able to understand. After a while, during this conversation, Shams approaches her, holds her chin between his two fingers, forcing her to look directly into his deep, dark, soulful eyes. Her heart skips a beat, it starts getting hard to breathe for her. The deep conversation continues like this for a while. Later Shams put his hand on her shoulder, gets closer to her, his face so close to her that she is able to feel the warmth of his breath. He caresses her cheeks. His finger moves down reaching her bottom lip. And then he draws his hand back and asks her to go. And after this kind of first interaction, Kimya starts thinking of him more and more and later asks Rumi that she wants to marry Shams.

2. Aziz Z. Zahara, who is a follower of Sufism, when talks to Ella about her wife (who is dead now), he talks like this- She was the healthy one. A staunch vegan, she ate only healthy things, exercised routinely, stayed away from drugs. Her angelic face brimmed with health, her body was always thin, brisk, and angular. She took such good care of herself that despite the age difference between us, I looked older than she did. 

After saying such things, later he clarifies that these weren't the things which got her killed but she died in an accident. One night, her car broke down in the middle of the highway, she got out of the car and decided to walk to the next village. She didn't have a flashlight or anything that would make her more noticeable. A vehicle hit her.

And later, in the end Aziz tells Ella that he is also going to die in a year or so at the age of 55. He knew about this and still was saying that she died so early (at the age of 62 or 63) and he was alive.

Why are you showing that you're so knowledgeable and have started to follow Sufism while you don't even know how to talk about someone so close to you. He is telling Ella about his early life in while he drank a lot, did drugs, slept with many women and now he is on this path.

3. In rule number thirty two Shams says - If you keep breaking other people's hearts, whatever religious duty you perform is no good. And while he was with Rumi, he made him do that, Rumi's wife's heart was breaking, his son's heart was breaking etc. And even Shams broke Kimya's heart.

4. While Shams tells a story to Aladdin about an assistant (who did as he was told by his master). Shams says that the assistant was too shallow to understand the wisdom behind the words of the master and he did as he was told. 

Then, did he forget that he asked Rumi to go to a tavern and bring two bottles of wine and Rumi did as he was told?

5. After all the learnings (as I could see he was the most intelligent of all the characters), Shams, being a Sufi, implementing forty rules, marries Kimya and later thinks he has made a mistake by marrying Kimya and wants to leave - even his body.

📍 Now I'd like to point out things I liked in the book:- 

1. Even after all this, I liked Shams character, he talks so much good (so much in sense), he has good knowledge, he respects everyone, understands everyone in a way that normal people are unable to. He answers beautifully.

2. I liked the relationship of Shams and Desert Rose. The character of Rose is well written, loved reading her part.

3. The story is quite interesting to read if you just want to read, but I don't think a reader can ignore the things I mentioned above. But many people have done so, maybe you can too. Because I had heard only good things about this book, I don't know how readers didn't talk about these things and only mentioned the good things.

📍 The language of the book is quite easy, so you will have no problem there, means beginners can go for it too.