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Exotic and beautifully written, The Virgin's Knot is the story of a young Turkish woman's struggle to overcome her destiny. Nurdane is stricken with polio and lives in a remote Turkish village. In constant pain, she can walk only with the help of braces. But as her father says, "When Allah takes something from you, He gives you something in return." In Nurdane's case, the gift is her ability to weave miraculous rugs -- rugs her fellow villagers are convinced can heal the sick and guarantee good fortune, and for which they are willing to offer whatever they have to obtain one as a dowry for their daughters.
Resigned to her lonely life, Nurdane unexpectedly meets an American anthropologist named John, who has come to Turkey on an expedition, and whose research points to important evidence lying beneath the hut housing Nurdane's loom. When he requests permission to dismantle her hut to look underneath, John's presence raises new questions for Nurdane about her role in life. Will her hands sustain her where her legs cannot? And does her talent for weaving magical bridal rugs compensate for the fact that she herself will never wed? Is her skill a blessing, or a curse? Steeped in mythology, religion, and Eastern culture, Holly Payne's debut novel is a work as rich and lush as one of Nurdane's glorious rugs. (Summer 2002 Selection)
Publishers Weekly
Straddling Europe and Asia, Turkey has always been situated at the crossroads of history, influenced by the past, folk tales and the beliefs of peoples who passed through on their way to somewhere else. Payne sets her vigorous debut novel at mid-20th century, when the country was slowly becoming a republic. But for people like Nurdane "the motherless cripple who is the young virgin of the title and lives in the isolated village of Mavisu" fear, hunger and patriarchal rule still dominate life. Polio has ruined Nurdane's legs, but it is believed that so long as her hands remain pure, Allah will speak through them. She has knotted hundreds of prayer rugs and, cruelly, matrimonial dowry rugs so renowned that merchants and thieves seek them out. Nurdane is weary and skeptical of this mixed blessing, curious about the outside world as represented by Antalya, the city where her cousin studies and her friend once heard a famous singer. Payne has several stories to tell, and although she finally draws together the threads, some of the characters and themes are dropped for too long. The descriptions "lamb's blood sizzling into a fire, a merchant and a scholar wordlessly evaluating each other" are cinematic. The 22-year-old Nurdane's struggle for self-definition is compelling, but Payne interrupts the narrative with exposition too often and overcomplicates an already intricate plot. Early on, when asked when a particular rug will be finished, Nurdane says, A rug is never truly finished. Is it? Anyone who has spent hours studying the intricacies of a kilim would agree with that statement as metaphor, but will wish it weren't quite so well suited to Payne's densely woven novel. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A thoughtful, tempered debut, with a hint of folk tale, about a virgin who weaves magic carpets. Though Turkey in the 1950s was on the verge of becoming a modern nation, the small mountain village still lived an isolated existence. In one such remote place lives Nurdane, a young woman and famed weaver crippled by polio. Supernatural properties are said to emanate from her impossibly perfect rugs: sick animals recover when laid on them, and people are healed by the simple act of possession, but, most importantly, brides who have her rugs beneath them will conceive male heirs. When Nurdane was a young girl, her father Ali (her mother died in childbirth) taught her to weave in compensation for her atrophied legs. Now, all believe that Allah speaks through her prayer rugs, and competition is fierce in the village to win the auctions held for them. Her lot in life, weaving rugs for brides' dowries, offers a cruel irony, for according to tradition (a tradition it appears her father invented in order to protect his daughter) she must remain pure to weave. Enter two men: Adam, Nurdane's doctor, who is set, with Ali's blessing, to marry her; and Hennessey, an American anthropologist digging in the village for evidence of an ancient goddess cult. The beautiful but crippled Nurdane has both Adam's pitying love and Hennessey's adoration-for it seems that the primitive symbols in her rugs substantiate his hypothetical claims. The tale's being filled with men--Nurdane's father, her two suitors, a cousin, a young boy, thieves sent to steal from her--provides an interesting assertion of the status of this woman, illiterate and without rights, yet venerated by a village of men. Payne keeps the story simple, elemental, and reserved, emphasizing the timeless quality of the tragic tale, though her choice also seems at times to distance the reader from the inner lives of the characters. Still, a well-crafted, meditative piece.
