wife by charlotte mendelson

the spectator 10 august 2024

Ik ga leven, an autobiographical debut novel by 23-year-old Lale Gül, was first published in Dutch in 2021. On release, it became an immediate bestseller – yet Gül received death threats and ended up ostracised by her family. Now that the book is appearing in translation as I Will Live, Anglophone readers can see why.

Gül’s novel tells the story of 20-year-old Büsra, who’s living what she describes a “schizophrenic” existence as a young Muslim woman in Amsterdam. She was born in the Netherlands, but her family are what she calls “Euroturks”, and visit their relatives each summer in the Turkish village from which her parents hail. At home, Büsra fights these “begetters”, who insist she wear a headscarf and distinguish herself from unbelieving women who’re like “fruit without a peel, lollies without a wrapper”. 

Her illiterate mother acts as the enforcer, throwing (for example) a wedge shoe at Büsra’s face for a small perceived transgression. Büsra’s brother, Halil, in contrast, has “all the freedom to manoeuvre he wants”. The latter pair also have an eight-year old sister, Defne, whom Büsra is desperate to protect from indoctrination – or “intellectual mutilation” – and perhaps tellingly, I Will Live is dedicated to “my late grandmother and Defne”. (The fictional aspects of the novel, in fact, often wear thin. Gul has admitted in an interview that “it’s all me in the book”.)

Out in the world, by contrast, Büsra wears make-up and tight dresses, serves alcohol, and is encouraged to be a free thinker at the university where she’s studying Dutch literature. She even has a secret boyfriend, Lucas, who’s white and Dutch; his father, Koos, donates to the Right-wing party PVV, and reacts badly to Büsra wearing a headscarf in their home. Yet this man, the first PVV supporter Büsra has ever seen “up close”, turns out – to her surprise – to be a “good-natured, funny person”, instead of one of “the most heinous racists alive”. Gül isn’t afraid to go against the grain: she describes her environment as she really sees it, not the way she’s expected to. In a similar vein, she describes Büsra and Lucas as being “chronically horny”, and there’s joyful defiance in how frankly she relates Büsra’s sexual pleasure. 

When writing this novel, Gül had hoped that her family wouldn’t find out about it – her parents aren’t native Dutch speakers – yet weeks after it was published, she had to flee the family home. Her commitment to documenting her journey to secularism has cost her much. It's maybe an unintended consequence of her bravery that the passages in which Büsra describes her questioning of Islam are the ones that seem most heavy-handed. Elsewhere, though, this young woman’s voice is more like that of a twentysomething, by turns irreverent and furious. In such moments, I Will Live is funnier, and just as brave. 

This review originally appeared in The Telegraph