Yasmin Ghorami has a lot to be grateful for: a loving family, a fledgling career in medicine, and a charming, handsome fiancé, fellow doctor Joe Sangster.
But as the wedding day draws closer and Yasmin’s parents get to know Joe’s firebrand feminist mother, both families must confront the unravelling of long-held secrets, lies and betrayals.
As Yasmin dismantles her own assumptions about the people she holds most dear, she’s also forced to ask herself what she really wants in a relationship and what a ‘love marriage’ actually means.
Love Marriage is a story about who we are and how we love – with all the complications and contradictions of life, desire, marriage and family. What starts as a captivating social comedy develops into a heart-breaking and gripping story of two cultures, two families and two people trying to understand one another.
Monica Ali’s debut Brick Lane was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003 and was a finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She followed that success with another couple of books but nothing for the past decade. Now she returns with Love Marriage, and it was certainly worth the wait.
Set in London, Love Marriage is a multilayered, very clever examination of race, class and identity. Yasmin is from a Bengali Muslim family who emigrated to England from Calcutta. She is training to be a doctor, like her father. Her brother Arif is an academic who was reported to authorities for researching Islamic activism. Yasmin is marrying fellow doctor Joe, who is in therapy. Joe’s mother Harriet is an eccentric feminist, who has written a book on sex – a subject that is off limits in Yasmin’s family. Their two families get to know each other in the lead-up to the wedding. It’s a great premise, delivered with heart, humour and searing intelligence.
The story is told from multiple perspectives – Yasmin, Harriet and therapist, Sandor – with numerous intersectional themes addressed. Each character is well-drawn and compelling, particularly the bride and groom. It’s hard to put this page-turner down as everything blows apart. Ultimately this is a story about love and connection; it asks big questions about love and marriage that leave you thinking long after the final page. I loved it! This is one of my top reads of the year, and it’s only February.
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