The Newlyweds
-
-
3.0 • 10 Ratings
-
-
- £5.99
-
- £5.99
Publisher Description
From Nell Freudenberger, one of America's most dazzling talents, comes The Newlyweds, an utterly captivating cross-continental love story
Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. It's a twenty-first-century romance that echoes ancient traditions - the arranged marriages of her home country. And though George falls for Amina because she doesn't 'play games', they will both hide a secret, and vital, part of their lives from each other.
A brilliantly observed, wry and yet deeply moving novel about the exhilerations - and complications - of getting, and staying, wed, The Newlyweds is a tour de force - a novel as rich with misunderstandings as it is with unlikely connections.
'Young writers as ambitious - and as good - as Nell Freudenberger give us reason for hope', New York Times Book Review
'Freudenberg has rare humanity, and talent great enough to command not only a vast landscape of imbalance and misunderstanding, but also a tender sphere of tiny intimacy, hidden yearning...A marvellous book', Kiran Desai, winner of the MAN Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss
Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novel The Dissident, (longlisted for the Orange Prize) and the story collection Lucky Girls, winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and shortlisted for the Orange New Writers' Prize and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. She was named a New Yorker '20 Under 40' writer and one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freudenberger's delicately observed second novel is another account of cross-cultural confusion in the tale of a Bangladeshi woman, 24-year-old Amina Mazid, who becomes the e-mail order bride of 34-year-old George Stillman, an electrical engineer in Rochester, N.Y. Arriving in snowy Rochester in 2005 is a culture shock for Amina, but within three years she has her green card, is married to George, and is taking college courses when not pulling espresso at Starbucks. Her marriage, though, has its problems. Sex is awkward, George loses his job, and Amina discovers something that makes her doubt his sincerity. She eventually returns to Bangladesh to bring her parents to the U.S., but a problem with her father's visa keeps Amina there and forces her back into the morass of her extended family's resentments and petty jealousies, all of which she'd hoped to escape in marriage. Add to her troubles an old suitor, Nasir, waiting not so patiently in the wings. Freudenberger (The Dissident) does an excellent job of portraying the plight of a young Muslim woman not totally comfortable in either of the worlds she inhabits. But Amina's passivity may frustrate many readers, and George is a complete cipher. In the end, Freudenberg's anatomy of a modern arranged marriage is somewhat too dependent on cultural clich s to entirely satisfy.
Customer Reviews
The Newlyweds...disappointing and dull read
It was only when I got to the end of The Newlyweds and read the authors acknowledgements that my fear was confirmed. She says this was an embellished story based on the accidental meeting she had with someone who she based the main character Amina on. My fear was that the author had simply met someone from another world, been charmed and intrigued and thought 'ahhh, what a lovely story.' Maybe in real life, but as fiction it is lacking in imagination or multi-dimensional characters. This story follows the initiation of Amina from Bangladesh into American life via a marriage with an American who is so boring, unappealing and one dimensional you wonder why the author thinks we would care what happens to him- or her. The book is pretty dull until another man turns Amina's head when she makes a short return trip to Bangladesh. Finally there's is some drama and tension. Not for long. Overall this is a story that has nothing profound to say. Fine...but does it provide drama, joy, tension, the company of great characters or any strong emotion? Nope. Does it provide insights into 2 cultures- 'average joe America' or Bangladesh? Nope. I imagine, someone out there might find this small story gentle and charming. It may just not be my taste. Authors trying to inhabit the mind of someone from a foreign culture need to nail it or I smell fake and 'trip to the anthropologists thesaurus'- better books in this vein are The No 1 Lady's Detective series by Alexander McCall Smith. Stories about the minutiae of people or one family only sing if the author is a true magician of language and character - like Franzen's The Corrections. I really wanted to love this book which tries to do both- but I was sadly disappointed.