Silent House (1983) is the second novel of Turkish nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk. The novel tells the story of a week in which three siblings go to visit their grandmother in Cennethisar, a small town near Istanbul. The book has received positive retrospective reviews from critics. It should not be confused with the Uruguayan horror movie with the same name.
The book is subdivided into the points of view of five persons: The grandmother Fatma, her deceased husband Selahâttin's illegitimate child Recep, her grandchildren Faruk and Metin and Hasan, the son of Selahâttin's other illegitimate son.The novel starts in an old, big and silent house in Cennethisar which is a part of Gebze. The owner of the house is an old, lonely and depressed woman named Fatma Hanim who is also referred to as grandmother. Recep who is a dwarf is responsible for everything related to the house such as feeding Buyukhanim, taking her to and from bed, cleaning the house, washing the dishes, and doing the shopping for the house. The three grandchildren of Buyukhanim will come to visit her for a week the next day. All the preparation for their arrival has been made.Fatma Hanim thinks about her grandchildren in her bed at night. She plans how and what she is going to talk to them when they arrive. Then she starts to think of the past. She remembers her late husband Selahattin Bey. Dr. Selahattin Bey is a man of free mind. He does not like the government of Committee of Union and Progress which is a political party. Therefore he is forced to go to an exile in Gebze leaving Istanbul behind. The house where Fatma Hanim lives now has been made in those days in exile. During their marriage, he dedicated his life to working on a massive encyclopedia that he claimed would enlighten the nation, freeing its people from, among other things, what he saw as a foolish belief in God. His behavior, as Fatma relates, ultimately drove away all of his patients.The grandchildren arrive on the day they are supposed to come. The eldest one is Faruk who is a historian. He works as an associate professor at the university. Nilgün is a student of sociology. She is a revolutionist. Metin is a high school student. He dreams of going to America and getting rich there. While they talk, Recep prepares the dinner table. After the dinner, Faruk and Nilgün start a long conversation. Metin goes out and finds his friend Vedat. They join in a group of rich youths. Metin falls in love with a girl in this group whose name is Ceylan. From there one, everything just gets worse.
This novel provides examples of:
- The Alleged Car: The car of Faruk is in a desolate state, and it breaks down in two plot-critical moments when Metin borrowed it.
- Anachronic Order: Fatma and Selahâttin's backstory is told from the perspective of Fatma, and her train of thought is not ordered by time.
- Arranged Marriage: Selahâttin and Fatma ended up as an extremely negative example of this. Fatma once thought that she had not listened to her husband in more than forty years.
- Attempted Rape: Ceylan was almost raped by Metin at the beach.
- Author Avatar: A minor example: Ismail mentions that he met the father of "Orhan, the one who's writing a book right now".
- Born in the Wrong Century: Selahâttin in the backstory. He issues his deep contempt that he cannot divorce Fatma with just two words anymore, and cannot take a second wife either, as the law had been changed after the formation of the Turkish Republic.
- Breakfast in Bed: The 90-year-old Fatma regularly demands this from her servant Recep.
- Brother–Sister Team: The siblings Faruk and Nilgün are the closest this novel has to offer in terms of a healthy family relation. They regularly go on walks or field trips together where they discuss their current issues.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Hasan thinks he is that, constantly lamenting that he will "treat women well" once he is in power.
- Did Not Get the Girl: None of the male protagonists; unrequited love is a recurring theme in Pamuk's works.
- Drives Like Crazy: Metin and his friends. They engage in illegal street races and harass drivers of weaker cars on the road.
- Drunk Driver: Faruk, Metin, and essentially all of Metin's friends. Metin almost runs over a pedestrian while drunk-driving.
- Dwarfism in Media: Recep is of short stature. This is at least partially caused by the extreme beating he received from Fatma as a kid.
- Dysfunctional Family: It's hard to find a family relationship that is not completely screwed up. Selahâttin and Fatma had lived for decades without love or even respect for one another, Recep cares for his stepmother Fatma despite the latter being constantly villainous to him, the grandchildren grew up without their deceased parents and all face their own problems in life, Hasan endangers his future because he doesn't study for school... and during the course of the novel it just becomes much, much worse.
- Evil Matriarch: Fatma. She is a constant nuisance to everyone around, shows nothing but contempt to everyone alive, and barely bothers to talk to her grandchildren. And that's just her now - in the past, she was even viler.
- Freudian Trio: The three siblings show tendencies of this. Metin is the Id, as he is hopelessly chasing a girl and his dream to go to America; Faruk is the Superego, as he is stuck in his job and constantly directed by social conventions; and Nilgün is somewhere in the middle.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: After Hasan's "friends" Mustafa and Serdar discover his affection to the suspected communist Nilgün, they try and force him to assault her by taking away her newspaper and tearing it apart. This is in order to prove his allegiance to the Nationalist Youth.
- It's All Junk: Or even dangerous from her point of view: Once Selahâttin died in the Backstory, Fatma started to burn all the countless pages from his encyclopedia.
- Meaningful Name: Invoked. The family name is "Darvinoğlu". When the new Turkish government mandated every citizen to pick a last name in 1935, Selahâttin picked this last name himself - it translates to " Son of Darwin. According to himself, the administration workers found it hilarious.
- Nazi Protagonist: It's not evident immediately as he is "only" a member of a nationalist street gang, but Hasan is this. In one of his later chapters, he fantasizes about his future as a company boss, and in this fantasy, his employees explicitly call him "My Fuhrer". Later, he beats the communist Nilgün so badly that she dies from it.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: What Fatma did to the illegitimate sons of Selahâttin. She beat the two infants so badly that one of them developed Dwarfism, whereas the other one limped for the rest of his life.
- Port Town: Cennethisar is located by the Marmara sea.
- The Peeping Tom: Hasan constantly watches Nilgün going to the beach, or simply being at home. He goes as far as entering her house to sniff her clothes.
- Religion Is Wrong: Selahâttin worked on an encyclopedia for all his life. Within that, he tried to disprove every single instance of God/Allah.
- The Runaway: Hasan by the end of the book. He buys a train ticket to get far away from Cennethisar, his parents, his peers, and the police.
- Shout-Out: Fatma remembers how, as a kid, she used to play with her friends Nigân, Türkan and Şükran. The first of these was the protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's first novel Cedvet and his sons.
- Starting a New Life: Hasan steals the purse of a factory worker and assumes his identity; he would just glue his picture onto the worker's idea.
- Would Hit a Girl: Hasan. He constantly has power fantasies about beating women, although he usually catches himself and adds something along the line of "...but of course, I wouldn't, I'm a nice guy." That is until he decides in affect that Nilgün needs to be "punished", and he beats her so badly that she dies from it.
- Would Hurt a Child: Fatma. And she even planned ahead to do it. Once when her husband Selahâttin was gone for a day, she went to the side house with his two illegitimate children in it, and beat them - badly.
