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| Not the best book/food pic, but what are you going to do? |
Category: I’ve wanted to read this for awhile because I’ve seen several intriguing reviews, and I’ve heard good things about Nell Freudenbeger.
My thoughts: Well, I was really into this book for the first 200 or so pages, then it went a bit downhill, and I had to push myself to go ahead and finish it. The Newlyweds is about the relationship between Amina, a young Bangladesh woman, and George Stillman, a thirty-something American, who connect with each other on a site called AsianEuro.com. Amina moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York, marries George, and tries to settle in with her new husband, family, and country. Like many people, Amina has to deal with nutty in-laws, including her aunt-in-law Cathy, and Kathy’s wacky adopted daughter Kim. Kim is one of those relatives who make family gatherings complicated, and who seeks to dominate every social situation. George, who seems kind of boring, turns out to have an interesting secret that affects Amina’s life, and devastates her when she finds out. This is all complicated by the fact that Amina has a plan to bring her parents from Bangladesh to live with her in Rochester. Things become even more complicated when Amina returns to Bangladesh and reconnects with Nasir, a family friend. Nasir is like the Bangladeshi version of Kim—someone whose presence renders every situation more complicated.
My favorite part of the book was when Amina was getting acclimated to America. She has a fish-out-of-water feeling with a lot of interactions with others, and it reminded me how tricky American idioms can be to those who aren’t native English speakers. But she’s determined to make a success of her choice. The Newlyweds shows how meddling in-laws and complicated family histories are not relegated to just one country. It had some good moments, but I don’t think I’ll be reading this one again, though. And for some reason, I don’t have a whole heck of a lot to say about this book.
Great passage: Amina still thought she knew her cousin better than anyone: even as a teenager she could see that Micki was obedient not out of a desire to please but because she’d already concluded that it was the only road to happiness—at least if you were a girl. Micki might have had the opportunity to leave the village as Ghaniyah and Amina had, especially if her father had stayed at home, but she would never have talked the way they did, mocking its backwardness in order to distance herself from her own place and people. Surely God loved someone like that better than he loved a person like Amina, who spent so much energy trying to escape the very spot where he had seen fit to bring her into the world.
Up next: Atonement
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