Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

When I finished Love Marriage I had to check that the author was indeed Monica Ali, the same writer whose debut novel, Brick Lane was Booker Prize listed and whose subject matter was serious, relevant, and which spoke for a community sometimes looked at askance by a wider Britain. Love Marriage, published twenty years later is not a sequel as such, but it does shine a light once more on a family whose Bengali origins are set off against the difficulties and challenges of integrating into twenty first century Britain.
For the most part Love Marriage is silly froth. Had I finished the book and then seen Sally Rooney had been contracted as editorial and content manager I would have figured.
That said its quite enjoyable froth, and the story of boy meets girl, with various attendant doubts, difficulties, and deceits, is always relatable. In this case the two protagonists are Yasmin and Joe. Are their anxieties and hopes plausible and interesting? In the case of Yasmin Ghorami I thought she was a good central figure and held the book together. At work, as a doctor at St Barnabas, her compassion for patients and her struggles with management and with the pressures of working within the NHS was always convincing. No wonder the current poster boy for insight into working conditions in the NHS, Adam Kay, endorses the book with the blurb “the most human portrayal of doctors I’ve ever read�.
Yasmin befriends an elderly lady, Zlata Antonova, and a sub plotline involves a wheelchair and ‘escape�, but this bit of the story was a bit too much One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest for my liking.
Yasmin also has a “best� friend and the value of this is demonstrated throughout the book. Rania, an immigration lawyer, is an attractive personality and I did laugh at her observations about the minefield of on-line dating. Her chosen Muslim dating website includes the tick box entitled “piety level� !!

Characters drive this book and I found that my response to the portrayals of the older generation was mixed. Yasmin’s father, Shaokat, was miserable throughout the book, and marginally resentful, and unsettled, and awkward. His was a life unfulfilled, despite significant medical skills and palpable success in helping the needy. A believable personality and a good, though distant, father at times.
The rest of the key adults were, I found, parodies of recognisable character types. Did I buy into the “new�, liberated, Anisa Ghorami, Yasmin’s mother? No I did not. Her late life embracing of new friends and interests didn’t wash with me at all. Anisa’s friendship with Flame, and with Harriet Sangster were remarked upon by her family. What unlikely, extraordinary, bonding revolved around Anisa they all observed. I also thought they were extraordinary, but I just didn’t believe in the plausibility of the adult female friendships at all.
Harriet Sangster, Joe’s mother conflicted me. The oedipal mother/son relationship between her and her son, Joe, was an interesting one. It was one which makes an interesting comparison with Shaokat and his son, Arif. Its strange and fascinating through a backward lens to see how the influence of parents manifest on the offspring in later life.

I had the chance to see Monica Ali in conversation with Neel Mukherjee on February 2,2022, the date of the book launch at Waterstones Piccadilly.
The main insights I gathered from the conversation included:
� Sex drives the story. The major turning points revolve around sexual encounters including infidelity and revenge sex. Monica Ali dreaded writing these scenes, having not done so before, and also in the knowledge that her daughter would be horrified!
� Title of the book. It’s a good perspective to look at the responses of people and communities when arrangements for a marriage are being made. Does love have to come before a marriage? The contrast implied in the title compared to arranged marriage is deliberate.
� “Clash of Cultures�. Monica Ali has seen reviews that imply a clash. That is not what concerns the book at all. The meeting of couples , and parents, is inherently comic.
� Character is everything, and Monica Ali has to be able to hear her characters. There is no ‘deus ex machina� in her story.
� Medical profession. Doctors are relatively little written about. For her research (which Monica Ali enjoys) she subscribed to the New England Journal. This book was started in 2016 prior to the heightened awareness due to Covid 19.
� Yasmin is the very opposite of the current vogue (seen by Monica Ali) of the “failure to launch�

Overall this was a not unpleasant reading experience but probably not one that will live long in the memory.