the madonna in a fur coat review you never asked for
tl;dr they did maria so dirty.
I’ve always found that the times in my life when I’ve leaned most into my “stem-my” side, also tend to be the times when I most acquire “creative input”. This is compared to, say, if I were to decidedly dedicate a period of my year to reading, or painting, or writing, in which I would struggle to do just these. In 2018, for example, I was still trying to be an engineering student, so of course, I procrastinated my way into reading kafka, and camus, and some of the other european classics; basically anything to not do my homework, ultimately declaring a literature double major to go with that engineering major (that I never actually did :P).
Then, once again, in 2020-2021, when I started taking more programming courses, I (almost compulsively) got into graphic art on procreate with my iPad, which, even in hindsight, was completely out-of-character for me, but did make me very happy at the time.
And now, as I spend every waking hour of the day either fine-tuning models, or procrastinating fine-tuning a model, my head wants nowhere to be if not fixated on a new book. It’s as though my body physically repels staring at code all day (I’ve begun to describe it as feeling hungover), and my mind yearns for a world filled with longing and desire and conflicted characters I can escape to.
I guess I can’t help but think of this quote from Eva Baltasar’s “Boulder”:
“I realize that I am smoke, that the things that define me rise as they would up a chimney, probing every crack, searching for a wellspring of light or cold, a cupola of sky to sprawl into.”
I think there’s something beautiful to say about the consistent way in which parts of me desperately rise when they’re pressed down or have been neglected; and more and more, I’m trying to keep a balance, where I allow myself to embrace them and tend to their needs without letting them overtake me.
So, I’ve allowed myself a lot of time to read this year, (close to 16 fiction books read 3 months into the year!) and with every book, I become a bit more opinionated on the plot and the characters and the writing, and my goodreads reviews have been growing exponentially both in length and in the time that they take for me to write (Ethan said the last one could’ve easily passed for a college lit essay).
And, seeing as I have not written any posts this month (and was otherwise not really planning to), I’ve decided to share my last review from the Turkish classic recently translated into English, Madonna in a Fur Coat.
For your reference, Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat was originally published in Turkey, 1943, and has resurfaced in popularity with gen-Z readers for its “timeless portrayal of longing and introspection”. It delves into themes of love, self-discovery, the impact of missed opportunities, and the complexities of human relationships.
The novel is set in 1920s Berlin, and follows Raif Efendi, a quiet man in his mid-20s from rural Turkey, who falls in love with a self-portrait painting (the “Madonna in a fur coat”) and subsequently with its artist, Maria Puder.
I went into this novel with the promise that my heart would be destroyed (which I love to hear) and that I’d never see love like the love of Raif and Maria (a tempting claim). So naturally, when this wasn’t the case — I WAS VERY CONFUSED!
Anyway, without further ado, here is my review — though please be warned; that
This contains major spoilers, and
My tone in goodreads is pretty different to my substack’s (what can I say, I write for my platforms) —And I do intend to keep the editing minimal:
tl;dr - they did maria so dirty
I'm honestly so confused with this book. My initial reaction was, “wow this guy is giving me the ick for falling in love with a painting”, and then Maria shows up and is so quirky! and fun!But then we actually meet her and I'm like, “oh slay????”
I'm usually skeptical of men who write women characters, especially given how Ali first introduces the Madonna, but when we actually meet her I realize, I like this woman so much?
Maria is so self-possessed, and lucid, and aware of her presence and the men-women dynamics affecting not just her relationships but every woman at the time, and she repeatedly resists being idealized or objectified or commodified by Raif or anyone else in his shoes. She is legitimately how people should communicate in order to avoid situationships, and I love her for that! Like, fair, Raif still idealizes the fuck out of her, but we know at this point it is on him since she is giving him the literal opposite of mixed signals.
That said, Maria is still complex and has wants and needs, and sometimes contradicts herself despite her warnings to Raif, and this turmoil is so well executed! You can tell that even though she tells Raif what she doesn't want from him or any other man, she ultimately does want to experience a love that consumes her— eventually, and with someone that is right, and she is convinced from her first impression of Raif that he is not the one for her. I think she maybe gets disproved from time to time when he stands his ground or acts "less like a child", so we can see Maria almost in real-time react to these behaviors and re-evaluate the idea of loving Raif, but she's not very sure of it herself.
The turning point for me is when she lets go of all inhibition and brings him home in new year’s. It's clear after that that Raif failed to deliver, and that she does not, and will not reciprocate the love that he claims to have for her. So after that, she rejects him and he is away from her for 10 days. But, when he returns 10 days later to find out she is sick... who is this Maria that now claims to love Raif? She feels like a shadow of the Maria we'd left 10 days ago. It was jarring to read her, and I wasn't sure if this was intentional or a complete miss by the author.
At first when he’s back, Raif is simply aiding her and neither of them acknowledges the terms in which they last parted (the rejection), but then she asks Raif what he did while they were separated, and for the life of me I don't know what to make of this scene. When Raif tells her about his days of wallowing and thinking her dead, personally, I was disgusted, and thought Maria would blow him off for being so dramatic (she had only asked for space), but what goes on in her mind? Maria is usually outspoken and open and articulate, but this time, not only is she quiet, but pensive, reserved—she stares at Raif for hours after he’s done speaking, to the point she doesn’t sleep. Is she acting like this because she’s sick? What's going on through her mind? And why then, does she choose this moment, after he basically confesses he’d be nothing without this woman that he just met a month ago, to tell Raif that she loves him too — even if not intensely so, at least enough to give this relationship an honest try?
It makes no sense to me, and the scene leaves me so confused. Did she really always had this much affection for him and just needed proof that he felt it as well? She says as much in her love confession, and this is how she justifies rejecting him just 10 days before, but she never struck me as insecure of Raif’s love for her —in fact, one time she even points out how much she knows she is loved by him.
So, is this the author mistakenly being inconsistent with his writing of Maria, or is he saying she was insecure all along (which seems so unlikely)? Or is it something more? Does he know that we would find this scene off-putting? Is it intentionally so? Did Maria, an up-until-now well-written, financially, sexually, and emotionally autonomous character, realize that, now that she is sick and alone needs someone to take care of her, and here is a man who can do that for her? A man who, despite not fully seeing her, (and despite her not fully loving him) will at least be devoted to her? Is it a commentary on the type of love women have to settle for? Is the pensive, silent, reserved shadow of herself just what giving in and settling down looks like? It just didn't make any sense... because any other day, she wouldn't have hesitated to point out that his reaction to her needing space from him, his obsession with her, was exactly what every other men in her life would've done. So why was she so moved by this?
This is genuinely the most confusing and off-putting part of the book. And if it was done intentionally and consciously, maybe it would do for a good commentary on men’s idealization of women simply for the purpose of self-discovery, and how women may be left to carry the weight of their emotional labor, but I somehow don't know if I can give Ali that much credit. It seemed to me Ali critiqued Raif’s distorted view of Maria through Maria herself, so having Maria change her mind and accept Raif’s unchanging behavior makes me question if there was ever any critique to begin with. And to ultimately KILL HER? Man, he’d completely lost me then. At this point the story was lost on me, and I’m not sure I understood the choice. Here, it dawned on me, “damn. Maybe Ali is just another man”. LOL.
First of all, the "dead woman as a catalyst" trope is just deeply infuriating to me. So maybe this just rubbed me the wrong way. But up until now, my impression was that there was a commentary somewhere here on the inability of men to see past the madonna-whore dichotomy, or how men dodge accountability for the tragedies of their lives by putting the blame on fictitious women that they never fully saw, and were never really there; but if any of this was the case, killing her without letting her live just seems to me like Ali falls into the very trap he was critiquing, by giving Maria a voice, and then taking it from her to make a point or to drive his narrative. And she just deserved so much more
Or maybe I want to give Ali the benefit of the doubt and say he understands the irony here and that it is all part of the commentary itself; that he knew what he was doing by killing her, that he knew that it was unjust, as it was for Raif to blame his miserable, failure of a life to a woman he not only never fully knew, but who also didn’t even exist for so much of the time he waited for her. In that case, wouldn’t this be such a layered story? But again, can I give Ali this much credit? —I don't know any of his work, or his beliefs, and—let's be real, this is the 1940’s we’re talking about; a century where tragic love stories of men chasing dazzling, unattainable women were all the big fuzz.
So what is it? Is it simply the tragic story of a beautiful, pure love that never was? Did I completely miss the point that everyone else seemed to get from our heartbreaking star-crossed lovers? Or is it the all-too-familiar story of a woman reduced to a memory of martyrdom in a male narrative, silenced before she could be fully realized? No one seems to point out the latter, as much as I’ve looked. I’ll never know what Ali meant, and I’d hate to give him more credit than he deserves, but at the very least, couldn’t both be true? Isn’t that the beauty of stories? A novel that wants to critique the romantic idealization of women, and almost gets there. But that in the end, kills off the woman, and leaves Raif alone—misunderstood, and still narrating her story.
3.5/5 stars.
So that’s it — that’s the review! I highly doubt that this makes it to anyone who has actually read the novel, but if it gets you to read it — do let me know what your thoughts are on the novel. Because I am confused. And would love to talk about it.
Thanks for reading this unusual post — I am now reading The Spirit Bares its Teeth, which I’m loving so far, and after which I will try to read some of the Spanish classics, since, why would I let my mother-tongue go to waste?
If you’d like to follow what I’m reading, check out my goodreads!
Much love,
Nicole🌊