Love Marriage: A Novel

by Monica Ali

Overview

“Cultural clashes, political satire, Oedipal conflicts, elegant prose—they’re all here in this romp of a book.” —Oprah Daily

A Phenomenal Book Club Pick and a New York Times Book Review Group Text Selection, Love Marriage is a glorious moving novel from Booker Prize shortlisted Monica Ali, who has “an inborn generosity that cannot be learned” (The New York Times Book Review).

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe.

As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin’s relationship and that of her parents, a “love marriage,” according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life.

A gloriously acute observer of class, sexual mores, and the mysteries of the human heart, Monica Ali has written a “riveting” (BookPage, starred review) social comedy and a moving, revelatory story of two cultures, two families, and two people trying to understand one another that’s “sure to please Ali’s fans and win some new ones” (Publishers Weekly).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982181499
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	22,287
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She was named one of the 20 best young British novelists under 40 by Granta. She is the author of four previous novels, including Untold Story and Brick Lane, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Guardian Book Prize, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was named a winner of the 2003 Discover Award for Fiction and a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book that same year. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

October 20, 1967

Place of Birth:

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Education:

B.A. with Honors, Oxford, 1989

Editorial Reviews

03/07/2022

Booker-nominated Ali (Brick Lane) returns with the complex yet breezy account of a 26-year-old London medical student who questions whether she really wants to be a doctor or if she’s merely carrying out her father’s wishes. Yasmin Ghorami’s family is Indian and Muslim, and she is engaged to white upper-class colleague Joe Sangster, whose mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist activist. As wedding planning commences with Harriet and Yasmin’s mother, Anisah, at the helm, tensions rise between the couple, but it turns out religious and cultural differences are the least of the roadblocks. The delicate web of familial relationships and drama is held up by a vibrant supporting cast: Yasmin’s underachieving brother and his girlfriend’s unplanned pregnancy; Anisah’s midlife awakening to her own power, and Yasmin’s father’s increasing alcohol use and isolation as he clings to his conservative religious beliefs. Everything leads toward the reveal of a dark secret held by the Ghoramis that threatens to undermine the engagement. The characters’ brisk discussions on politics, culture, and race skate over ideological divides, the substance of which emerges in dramatic irony and creates a textured portrayal of an immigrant family. This is sure to please Ali’s fans and win some new ones. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Love Marriage

“Ali successfully skewers everyone—white feminists, children of immigrants, overconfident male doctors...funny and satisfying.”
—Glamour

“Such lively characters, they practically waltz off the page to hand readers save-the-date cards."
—New York Times Book Review, May “Group Text” pick

"Cultural clashes, political satire, Oedipal conflicts, elegant prose—they’re all here in this romp of a book."
—Oprah Daily

“What starts out as a novel about planning a wedding that crosses two very different cultures evolves into something quite different. LOVE MARRIAGE is about coming of age when you thought (perhaps wrongly) that you already had arrived.”
—Bookreporter

“A riveting portrait of a seemingly perfect engagement’s unraveling... Ali’s character treatments are multifaceted, humane and fluid in this multicultural family drama.”
—BookPage, STARRED review

"The characters’ brisk discussions on politics, culture, and race skate over ideological divides, the substance of which emerges in dramatic irony and creates a textured portrayal of an immigrant family. This is sure to please Ali’s fans and win some new ones."
—Publishers Weekly

“[A] colorful tale of strained relationships ... The finale is rich, bawdy, and bold, a dramatization of the many ways we fail those closest to us and build lives on shifting sediments of buried feelings. And we live for love, nonetheless.”
—Booklist

"Ali’s immersive novel, skipping deftly between several points of view, might be termed a comedy of manners of Britain’s urban middle class, but the comedy here has teeth: Though the book treats its characters with affection, the racial dynamics are conveyed with real, heart-rending bite. A keen look at London life, relationships (especially interracial ones)—and a return to Ali’s most celebrated territory."
—Kirkus

UK Praise for Love Marriage

“Monica Ali’s latest novel explores a wide range of themes from smashing cultural taboos to the faltering steps you take when you’re young and in love and the experience of being the child of immigrants. Ali’s wit and insight illuminate the complications of modern love in Britain today. A joy.”
—Harper’s Bazaar

“Every bit as compelling as her debut, Brick Lane... warm and intelligent.”
—Good Housekeeping

“Love Marriage is wildly entertaining. As you read you’re thoroughly immersed in the intricacies of Ali’s characters... This is a bold and generous book, with large portions set in a sprawling hospital — the perfect backdrop for asking powerful questions about what constitutes health in life and health in love, now.”
—Financial Times

“Ali has written a brilliantly tender and compelling novel about who we are and how we love in 21st century Britain.”
—Martin Chilton, Independent

“Over 500 compulsive, tightly plotted pages, it explores the conflict between duty and desire, family and freedom... a master storyteller.”
—Madeleine Feeny, Prospect

“Rich, sensitive and gloriously entertaining... the novel’s real strength lies in its depiction of complex social encounters”
—Tash Aw, Times Literary Supplement

“A novel with the richness, and the throng and press and hum of life itself, Love Marriage is bold, compassionate, big-hearted, pitch-perfectly written, and utterly unputdownable. Every single character lives and breathes on the page. Make time for all of them for they are going to take up residence in your mind and soul for a long, long time.”
—Neel Mukherjee, Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Lives of Others

“No one captures the modern family like Monica Ali—Love Marriage is a masterful cacophony of characters, all drawn with deep empathy and sharp insight. The novel is full of surprises and unexpected twists, with an ending that will take your breath away.”
—Tahmima Anam, author of The Startup Wife

From the Publisher

12/01/2021

This latest from Bangladeshi-born, UK-raised Ali, a Granta Best of Young British Novelists, features 26-year-old medical student Yasmin Ghorami, who's engaged to posh Joe Sangster. To Yasmin's relief, Joe's elegant mother quickly embraces her own not-as-polished mom, but family complications—and Joe's less-than-devoted ways—quickly threaten the romance. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2022-03-02
Two London families—one Bengali, one White—collide spectacularly when their two eldest children decide to marry.

Yasmin Ghorami is a people-pleaser. At 26, doing what others expect is so ingrained in her that when her younger brother, Arif, asks her what she hoped to do before she became a doctor like their father, she can’t even remember if she ever had separate dreams of her own. She follows the rules of her family and her faith. She still lives with her parents and Arif in London, but not for long: She’s about to be married to Joe Sangster, a fellow doctor. Her parents, both Muslims with differing degrees of religiosity, thwarted tradition and married for love, and Yasmin is convinced that marrying Joe is her own romantic destiny. As the wedding plans coalesce, Yasmin has to deal with her future mother-in-law, Harriet, a Gloria Steinem–esque figure who is one of the leading feminist writers and thinkers in England. Harriet’s urbane, liberal fetishizing of Yasmin’s family—especially her homemaker mother—is a destabilizing influence, as is Harriet’s possessive relationship with Joe. Then there’s Arif’s aimlessness and his increasing awareness of the racism, both blatant and microaggressive, in his and Yasmin’s daily lives. Yasmin looks to Joe for stability, but he’s got secrets of his own. Before long, Yasmin is forced to reexamine the foundations of her whole life before the cracks threaten to bring everything she knows crumbling down. Ali’s immersive novel, skipping deftly between several points of view, might be termed a comedy of manners of Britain’s urban middle class, but the comedy here has teeth: Though the book treats its characters with affection, the racial dynamics are conveyed with real, heart-rending bite.

A keen look at London life, relationships (especially interracial ones)—and a return to Ali’s most celebrated territory.

Kirkus Reviews