Family Mythology: Book Review of Monica Ali's Love Marriage

 

Love Marriage by Monica Ali
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to Scribner and GoodReads Giveaways for the review copy of Monica Ali’s Love Marriage.

In Love Marriage, Yasmin, a young, British-Muslim doctor whose parents emigrated from India, is in the middle of her residency in a geriatric unit. If that's not enough, Yasmin is also engaged, living at home with her strict parents and her adult, out of work brother. Her fiancé, Joe, another young doctor, also lives with his mother. At the beginning of the book, Yasmine thinks that she understands her family and her fiancé, she even believes that she understands herself.

As Yasmin sees things, her mother spends her time caring for her family and her elderly neighbors, cooking, helping run errands, and accumulating other’s cast-off possessions from rummage sales. Her father is an austere doctor who challenges her with case studies to identify diagnoses. Her brother cannot seem to find a job and stays in his room when he is not staying with his girlfriend or wasting time on his hobby of making documentaries. Her fiancé is close to perfect, and his mother, Harriet, was a pioneering feminist and is still well-regarded. She wants to do right by her patients and everyone else. When the dinner where her parents will meet Harriet arrives, Yasmin is terrified that her parents will embarrass her in front of moneyed and sophisticated Harriet. She thinks that this is her biggest problem. 

She plans her life around her impending marriage as though moving out of the house will solve all her problems. But as Yasmin believes that she has everyone pinned down, one after another, those close to her, especially her family, fail to maintain her narrow understanding of them.

While Yasmin is clearly the center of the story, Harriet and Joe’s therapist also have chapters attached to them. Through Harriet, we see another view of Yasmin and her fiancé and another female experience. To Yasmin, Harriet's openness about her personal life is the antithesis of her own family.

Through her Joe’s therapist, we learn that he has a secret that he is afraid to tell Yasmin but which could have a large impact on their marriage. The therapist sees the fiancé as a textbook case, waiting and leading him to a psychological epiphany.

The book is very clear to point out Yasmin’s youth and naivete, and it seems, at times, to be too obvious. By the end of the novel I did not like her nearly as much as I liked her at the beginning. She is self-absorbed and unable to see how complicated and nuanced everyone else’s life is. Another character tells her that she has a “mean streak” and I cannot help but agree.

Would I teach Love Marriage? I can see teaching this novel as part of a contemporary literature class or perhaps reading it as part of a novel writing class. The plot is rather slow, as is true with many literary novels, but as Yasmin also learns, the characters have great depth. The discussions of family, sexual politics, Islamophobia, class, and work-life balance could spark some interesting discussions. However, I am not sure how much I would enjoy reading the book again. Although the characters are richly drawn, I do not really want to spend more time with them.

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