Customer Reviews

The Virgin's Knot

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Plot: a young Turkish women stricken with polio wields the great gift of weaving beautiful rugs, that some feel, grant miracles to their owners. Unhappy herself, the woman finds potential happiness in a traveling anthropologist. Sound interesting? It is. At least that part is. The problem is Holly Payne. Never have I read such a terrible book with this much potential. Holly Payne has overwritten 'The Virgin's Knot' as to make it painful to read. At times, I struggled to finish. But maybe I'm being too hard. If you're the kind of reader that feels that adding the word 'incredulous' to a sentence makes it better, then you'll love this book! 'Incredulous' is used incredulously! Midway through, I begged for no more appearances of the word, but like the inevitability of the sun's rising, there it appeared every couple of pages. And the sun, I have a bone to pick with it too. In this novel, everything glistens 'in the light', or moves 'in the light', or walks 'in the light'. If you're in Holly Payne's world, you're not just tan, you're tan 'in the light'. But that's not entirely true. Sometimes your tan 'in the hard light' or 'sharp light' or 'moonlight' (for those night tannings). This dark story is told with light just about everywhere. Oh yeah... also, no one can hear for some reason. All of the characters respond to every initial bit of dialogue with the perceptive response of, "what?" A good chunk of the book consists of dialogue being repeated for these hard of hearing what-sayers. Perhaps all the 'what-ing' is supposed to infuse the dialogue with a sense of shock or amazement (in the light), while in fact, its just silly.

All that said, if you read incredibly fast... so fast that you don't pay attention to any of the words... and don't mind an unfinished story with a terrible ending... then this is the book for you.

The story was just what I wanted, just what I was looking for, a story about another time, another place, another culture... a
story that could take me away from my current reality and at the same time teach me about another culture.

You have to love Nurdane and identify with her. The characters and the story were strong.

But the writing was bad enough at times to be distracting.

The total lack of quotation marks in the entire book was my first annoyance. A lousy attempt at being different that serves no
purpose at all and only confuses things horribly.

Then some of the writing was just... it made me think of "overacting". Things were over-described and it made me think of
Snoopy on his doghouse w/ his typewriter typing "it was a dark and stormy night". Not everything has to be described and
compared to something else. Why can't the character just wipe the sweat from his neck? Why does he have to catch a fly
between his fingers at the same time? It makes no sense.

There were many flaws and inconsistencies in the book beyond the amateurish writing style. Things such as a mention of a
transistor radio playing and then later saying that the record stopped and all you could hear was the scraping of the needle.
Well, was it a transistor radio or was it a record player? And how does one rest their their knee on their chin? Unless you are
a contortionist, it's probably the other way around.

There's mention of wild board roaming the area and then later there's mention of how boars in the area went extinct many
years earlier due to polio. Well, which is it then?

I also felt the book was written like the script for a tv-movie. Too many paragraphs start with the likes of; "A crack of
thunder." "The shuffle of feet." It sounds more like instructions for a sound crew than it does creative writing.

Almost every scene begins with '"HE" did this' or '"SHE" did that' and you don't know WHO "he" or "she" is until you read a
few paragraphs, then you have to go back an RE-read the beginning to put the right image in your head.

The story never finishes either. What happened in the end to Ayse?

And all this talk on the flap about love... it's not until the very end of the book that you even begin to get a glimpse of who loves
who and why.

If you can stand the writing flaws, the story is nice, although the end was such a let-down I wanted to just scream.

Holly Payne weaves a beautiful world of mountains, sky, light, and art in the beginning of this novel about a polio-stricken young weaver. At some point about halfway through the middle of the book, after having been swept up in the language, the character of Nurdane, and the depictions of village life, I started to feel increasingly frustrated with her writing. While the character of Nurdane is beautifully realized, the other characters, especially the men, are flat, even caricature-like. Their motivations, although central to the unfolding of the plot, remain opaque at best. Secrets, deceptions, and secondary plots are hinted at then abandoned. The anthropologist on his goddess quest--unlikely in any academic setting, especially in the 1950s--appears to be included in the story mainly to provide comic relief. The most compelling element in this story is Nurdane--her faith and her strength. Her disability has apparently made her ineligible for marriage, but as a respected artist she is allowed more freedom than most unmarried women. However Payne uses language that obscures more than it illuminates, so the reader is often confused about what Nurdane is really feeling or thinking.
Payne rushes into an inexplicably violent ending that destroys the mood of the book. Nurdane's actions are completely out of character, they violate her faith, her sense of self, and the complicated love she and her father share. Instead of illuminating the world of a Moslem woman in a little-known part, of the world Payne has ended up with an unevenly written book with a grim, sensationalist conclusion that would keep me from recommending it to anyone. I can't help but think that thoughtful critiques by other readers, including Moslem readers, and a thorough job of editing, might have saved this book, and let Payne express the beauty and strength of the Turkish village people and their artistic traditions as well as the restrictions faced by village women. Payne obviously means to show that patriarchal traditions are repressive for women, but she has also created a strong female character whose faith is an integral part of her. The ending obscures any kind of complexity in the relationship Nurdane has with her religion, with the men in her life, and with her own gifts.

The Virgin's Knot is an interesting view into traditional village life in rural Turkey on the brink of modernity. I wouldn't say it is a 'feminist' novel, or an 'ist' anything; just a darn good read.

No, it's not the book to buy if you want to learn to weave rugs, but it is a very readable account of the choices, or lack thereof, faced by men and women in traditional societies. It reminds me of the time I've spend in villages in Turkey, and it will help to take you there as well.

The novel starts with the slow, languid pace of village life. Some readers might prefer a more brisk beginning, but village life is not brisk. With the appearance of the American, Hennessy, both the plot and the tension build rapidly. Several themes intertwine; our desire for the best, our belief in our limits, our bargains with fate and with God.

Ms Payne has a nice way with descriptive phrases and is able to evoke an image of what the village is like rather nicely. The complexity - dare I go for the obvious and say tapestry? of the story she weaves in interesting; even better, the ending is not given away too early in the book - the story really could turn in any number of directions, almost to the very last page.

So go read it already!

Nurdane, is a weaver living high in the remote mountain village of Mavisu. Disabled in early childhood, she cannot hope to be a bride like those for whom she weaves her astonishing rugs. But she dreams, comforted by the knowledge that as long as long as her hands remain pure, her skill, a gift from Allah, will remain.
Fathers in her village compete with one another, convinced their sin of bearing daughters will be expiated by the arrival of grandsons, if only marriages can be consummated on one of Nurdane's mystical rugs.

When American physical anthropologist, John Hennessey arrives, eager to find proof of Cybelle the ancient Goddess whom he believes will free the women from their male-imposed Islamic shackles, Nurdane is drawn to him.
Femininity lost, suppressed and denied by centuries of tradition and religious observance the warp, interlaced with a weft of emerging independence through forbidden education and societal change.
Holly Payne's first novel is set in 1950's Turkey amongst the people and the land she loves. With a richness and beauty like the hand-woven rugs themselves, she ties us, knot by knot into village life and beliefs, some of which endure to this day.

As Nurdane weaves and dreams of one day lying on her own dowry rug, she knows she must sacrifice something to Allah: her skill as a renowned weaver of healing rugs, or her womanhood.

The emergence of women and matriarchal power in society has been a theme in literature for centuries and Holly Payne adds to that library with this delicate, magical book.

I loved this book--up until the very end. The character development was good, and the story lines well-developed. Until the end of the book, that is. Just when you think things are getting interesting, it all comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying end. The fates of two supporting characters are left hanging. The fates of the three main characters could have been so much better delineated but are truncated, and unnecessarily so, in my opinion. Shame on this author for taking the coward's way out--just because you do not know quite where to take your characters, it is not kosher to knock them off. Shame on the editor for allowing this. This story would have been so much richer and more complex, and the book so much the better for it, had the story lines been allowed to develop and come to some sort of conclusion other than the one that did occur.

Other than this, the story is well-crafted, and full of rich detail. Other than a few details about weaving that are incorrect (one cannot strum weft, for example), it is easy to be drawn into the fabric of the tale, and the book becomes addictive. I would like to have seen how Nurdane overcame the constraints of her culture and learned to live and love. I also wish someone in the village knew what a tourniquet was, for Pete's sake!!

I loved reading this wonderfully visual novel. I had the feeling the author was there with me during the entire journey. Holly Payne's devotion to sensory writing allows you to experience not only the sights and sounds of Turkey, but also sensations like tearoom aromas and the texture of the lead character's hands as she masterfully creates her rugs. In addition to its ethereal reflections, the novel is finely balanced with historical and political accuracy. I hope Ms. Payne has more work on the way. I would love to repeat the experience I had while reading her first novel!

This is a spectacularly beautiful story andthe characters have the potential to become memorable. The setting is exotic and fascinating. HOWEVER, the book is poorly written in the sense that the characters, though endearing, are not well-developed and are rather flat. The plot, though full of potential, is inconsistent in its movement. The research is incredible, but is not incorporated very well into the story: it's like reading a story with an academic essay mixed in at odd parts. I was just disappointed because the book showed so much promise, but was poorly written and developed.

Holly Payne has a wonderfully evocative writing style, and has crafted a psychologically complex main character. A number of reviewers were disappointed or upset by the sudden, violent ending of the book. I didn't see it, however, as an 'out' for the author, but rather as a culmination of the Gordian myth with which she begins the book. Payne very intentionally gives an account of the myth of the intricate knot tied by Gordius (the Gordian Knot). The expression "to cut the Gordian knot" refers to solving a difficult problem by a sudden decisive action (remember that in the myth the knot was not carefully and logically unknotted, but slashed with a single sword stroke). So one might conclude that the "Virgin's Knot" of the title is not, as one first suspects, all those knots composing the Turkish carpets -- but rather the Virgin's (Gordian) knot: how to solve her complex and complexing situation. This book is a wonderful read -- on the surface for the beautiful word choices, and on a deeper level for it truths. [Its complexity could make it a very good assignment for a university's women's studies or psychology class.]

I had the pleasure of being one of the first to read this book when it came out, and I loved it.

There are few times I have read a book when I have been grabbed by the neck, thrust into the story, walking right alongside a character like Nurdane, and truly given as out of body an experience as I think is possible to have. I too was taken for a sensory journey through the aromas and mysticism of turkey in the 1950's that I find hard to forget.

From what I know this is the first novel from this author. I do think there are opportunities for the author to mold her craft thru her future works. But I suppose the reason I am not spending a lot of time talking about those items is I guess because to me, Holly Payne shows a tremendous amount of promise. That promise is what comes through more loudly than anything in this work. Her description, the sensual writing style, and the power with which she conveys here thoughts are, to me, impressive.

If you are looking for a powerful and emotional experience I would recommend this book.