Liquid
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this brilliant debut novel, a young Muslim scholar stuck in the mire of adjunct professorship in Los Angeles decides to give up her career in academia and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer. By midsummer reality hits, taking her—and her project—to Tehran.
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just "marry rich."
But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County.
Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time.
For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Elif Batuman, Liquid delivers a modern tale of romance, loss, and belonging like no other. Mariam Rahmani’s gorgeous high-wire satire explodes off the page with verve and originality in this riveting spin on the classic romantic comedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rahmani puts a satirical spin on the rom-com with her incisive if predictable debut novel. In 2019 Los Angeles, the unnamed narrator, a queer daughter of immigrants from Iran and India, is two years out of graduate school, struggling to land a tenure-track job in the humanities, and striking out at romance. Still, a friend tells her that she's "better off than the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel," thanks to her independence. The narrator decides to take a social science approach to dating: she'll go on 100 first dates over the course of the summer and take copious notes, with the goal of securing a marriage proposal. What follows is a whirlwind homage to the classic "ridiculous first date" trope: a man takes the narrator to his parents' house, a woman needs a green card, a married man fails to tell her about his open marriage, and so on. The novel abruptly shifts tone after the narrator learns her father has had a heart attack, prompting her to visit him in Tehran. Rahmani's attempt to straddle the line between satire, literary fiction, and rom-com doesn't quite land, though there's plenty of sharp cultural criticism, particularly on dating and adulthood. Fans of Elif Batuman ought to take note.
