Review | Love Marriage is the novel we need in a world falling apart, for Brick Lane author Monica Ali’s comic intelligence and mischievous sensationalism
- The Brick Lane author’s fifth novel sees two young doctors, one a British Indian, get engaged. When the future mother-in-laws meet things get interesting
- A meaty soap opera that uses just about every sensationalist trick while leaning towards making grand statements about multiculturalism, this is pure fun
Love Marriage by Monica Ali pub. Scribner
Love Marriage is the fifth novel in 19 years by British writer Monica Ali. She has done well to get this far. Ali will probably always be best known for Brick Lane, her 2003 debut, which sold like a blockbuster and won praise and prize nominations like a masterpiece.
Four years later, it was turned into the obligatory over-hasty and underwhelming movie. Ali herself became a star, fought over by critics as venerable as Germaine Greer and Salman Rushdie, who, respectively, attacked and defended her authenticity as the new voice of the Anglo-Bangladeshi community.
Not every writer survives such instant fame and acclaim, let alone goes on to produce three further novels of wildly varying settings and styles, not to mention variable quality and reception. See the interlinked stories set in rural Portugal that comprise Alentejo Blue (2006) or the alternative history starring Diana, Princess of Wales in Untold Story (2011).
Which brings us, more or less, to Love Marriage. It is a title to toy with. Did Ali intend a bold declaration of thematic rights? Or, thinking perhaps of Jane Austen, an old-fashioned idea of romance’s proper order: Love (and then) Marriage?
