LoveReading Says
From the acclaimed author of Brick Lane and In the Kitchen, Monica Ali’s Love Marriage tells an un-put-down-able tale of two couples, two cultures and two families in present-day London. It’s an incisive, huge-hearted window into flawed individuals haunted by their pasts, love, desire, class and race delivered with the wit and honesty of a true storyteller.
Yasmin and her fiancée Joe are both junior doctors, on the verge of starting a new life together, though they come from very different worlds. White and wealthy Joe has grown up in his overbearing mother’s Primrose Hill pile, while Yasmin is of Indian heritage, a south Londoner who’s fulfilling her father’s dream by following his footsteps into medicine. As the wedding edges closer, their families spend more time with each other, and Yasmin’s mother strikes up an unexpected bond with Joe’s mother and one of her feminist friends. At the same time, Joe is presented with harrowing truths about his upbringing and addiction during therapy, while Yasmin starts to question what she really wants, who she really is, and what marrying for love (the “Love marriage” of the title) really means.
Though often suffused in warm humour, the novel is also starkly, movingly honest. Its pages shiver with damaged individuals; flawed and flailing lost souls at all stages of life. As the characters struggle with the lies they‘ve told themselves, and the secrets they’ve kept from others, readers are presented with remarkable moments of authentic pain and joy, not least when truths are finally faced.
Joanne Owen
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Monica Ali Press Reviews
I absolutely loved it. It had me gripped and I was so invested in her brilliant characters with their fallibilities and secrets! I empathised with every one of them and really felt I knew them all as individuals. I loved how she so cleverly interwove their experiences to create such a fabulous story. She writes human frailty so well, and her astute observations on family dynamics are superb. Exquisitely written with big heartedness, intelligence and passion. This will be a hit I have no doubt - Ruth Jones, author of NEVER GREENER
Funny, warm, powerful ... LOVE MARRIAGE has a warm intelligence and a sharp observational power, making the characters and the world of the story feel very alive - Diana Evans
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
A truly astonishing piece of writing - exquisite storytelling, featuring the most human portrayal of doctors I've ever read. I defy you to put this book down - Adam Kay (2021)
I have loved every one of Monica Ali's books and LOVE MARRIAGE is her best. A huge, bounteous story, it is lit from end to end with human variety and storytelling brilliance. Ali writes like an angel who is not afraid of the devil. It will be a novel of the year and confirms Monica Ali as a national treasure - Andrew O'Hagan (2021)
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
This is such a gloriously vibrant and tender novel packed with wit, intelligence and wisdom. It has everything - clashing cultures, family rifts, suppressed addictions, desire, passion. Her two junior doctor protagonists are superbly drawn - flawed, courageous, flailing, human. Just brilliant - Rachel Clarke (2021)
Worth the decade it took to arrive... This is a proper family saga, both deliciously old-fashioned and full of surprising reversals - Alex Preston, The Observer
I absolutely loved LOVE MARRIAGE. It's a story about love and family, about despair and forgiveness, about trauma and recovery, about expectation and responsibility, about friendship and community. Mostly, it's about having the courage to lose yourself, in order to find yourself again. It's big-hearted and tender and it's a novel that cares about its characters so deeply that you will too - Hannah Beckerman
I loved Love Marriage, and looked forward to reading it every night. Funny, compassionate, sexy, romantic, beautifully plotted and richly peopled, it is both highly original and working within a literary tradition of novels about love and marriage. Above all it is about the way that individuals are a mystery to each other, and themselves, wounding and misunderstanding each other, yet also about how, with patience and kindness, we can change for the better - Amanda Craig
Through the construct of a marriage, Monica Ali imagines complex modern lives tip-toeing around and defying each other's sensitivities in a warm, affectionate and hilarious novel. Love Marriage is every bit as compelling, as charming as Brick Lane. A joyous novelist at the peak of her formidable powers writing fresh lives into our literary tradition - Daljit Nagra, author of LOOK WE HAVE COMING TO DOVER!
I tore through Love Marriage. An engrossing read... Such a brilliant portrayal of how we can't help but be mortified by the ones we love, no matter how much we hate ourselves for it. Even in the characters' darkest and most desperate moments there is warmth - they're not perfect but you root for them all the same. I enjoyed my time peeking into their lives - and was happy to see everybody exactly where they should be (for better or worse) when it came time to leave them - Justin Myers
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
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
