When a couple decide to get married it's a nerve-wracking experience arranging for the parents to meet for the first time. Monica Ali's “Love Marriage” opens with Yasmin travelling with her parents to the home of her fiancé Joe and his mother. Though Joe's mother Harriet is a feminist and scholar who has published a progressive sexually-explicit book, Yasmin is too nervous to even mention sex in her household because of her parents' traditional values. So she has even more cause to worry about how their very different families will get on. The story describes how these individuals become heavily entangled in each other's lives amidst planning for Yasmin and Joe's marriage. Certain aspects of all their identities have remained hidden, but as they come closer to making a commitment the truth about the past and these characters' desires comes out into the open. There's a wonderfully engaging quality to Ali's style of writing which makes so many of these characters feel instantly familiar. I greatly enjoyed reading this romantic drama which involves the complexities of modern relationships, misunderstandings between generations, cross-cultural tensions and issues in the medical profession.
It's moving how Yasmin's character develops over the course of the novel so she gradually comes to question what she really wants in life (both professionally and romantically) and how she underestimates her parents. Her experience diligently training to become a doctor contrasts sharply with that of her brother Arif who wants to make a documentary that he'll post on YouTube. Equally, the way he pursues a relationship is very different from Yasmin. However, the novel teases out assumptions which are made concerning career choices and the path couples take showing how there is no single way to live one's life. It also openly addresses different levels of racism and Islamaphobia and how the dialogue surrounding this in both liberal and conservative circles of British society can involve misconceptions, oversensitivity and hypocrisy. Since Harriet is a writer and knows a number of other authors there are also discussions between the characters involving the purpose of the novel itself and whether an author should only write about their own experience or allow themselves to imaginatively create stories of other lives.
Though the novel openly addresses these and many other issues, the characters are fully rounded so I felt really involved with the way Ali dramatises their inner and outer conflicts. One of the most fascinating characters is Yasmin's mother Anisah who undergoes a feminist awakening and starts to develop her own business selling chutneys. Though Yasmin's parents have always maintained theirs was a love marriage (as opposed to an arranged marriage) there's a question surrounding how they got together which hangs in the background until the truth is finally revealed. As so often is the case, what we perceive on the surface is very different from what's going on inside of people's experience. The pressure this causes builds throughout many different characters' lives. It's touching following how Yasmin gradually comes to a more dynamic understanding of those closest to her and herself in this tale filled with suspense, humour and wit.
