Monica Ali

This is a treasure of a book. ❤️ About how we see ourselves and our families - and about how we can totally not really know the people closest to us.

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "People from Bangladesh in London. The assimilation & segregation pressures build, and the homeland still beckons. Nice quotation from amazon.com: "If Dickens or Trollope were loosed upon contemporary London, this is exactly the sort of novel they would cook up. --Claire Dederer""

I liked this novel about the life of a Bangla-Deshi girl sent to London for an arranged marriage to an older man. A lot of interesting characters, all a little bit clichèd but all with some individuality and even charm. I've read a few novels by south Asians but never from the point of view of a Muslim woman so that was interesting also.

I trudged through the first chapters, then skimmed the rest > it stayed boring and repetitive.

Nice cover.