The Newlyweds (edizione 2012)

Love in the age of the Internet, this certainly isn’t the theme of Nell Freudenberger’s book The Newlyweds, but that is where it begins. Amina is a smart, computer-literate girl in Bangladesh with an advanced knowledge of English. She dreams big, but not as big as her parents dream for her. She one day adds her profile up to an overseas dating site and begins an online relationship with George, a thirty-something engineer from upstate New York.
George travels to Bangladesh to meet Amina in person, and make her dreams come true, no not getting engaged (although they do that) but make it possible for her to live in America, by being his wife. There are some charming chapters about Amina trying to fit in an understand America – but then a sort of soap opera plot takes over, actually a few of them, and the book sort of lost me.
But, that being said I enjoyed Freudenberger’s writing and characters – even if I thought the plot strayed a lot. I love books where I am exposed to new cultures, and find characters that try and make their way in a new culture. It is always insightful. And as an aside – while I ordered this book on my Kindle, what a beautiful cover for this book.

This review is also posted on my book blog: www.BaileysandBooks.com. ( )

Amina lives in Bangladesh but wishes to marry an American and finds George, an electrical engineer from Rochester NY through an EuroAsia matchmaking website who will do. They settle into a new three bedroom house in the suburbs where Amina keeps a spotless house, improves the flower garden, and is easily employed in short term low wages work. Her husband has a professional job but is encouraging to Amina about her education, her job prospects.

They live a sterile life until Amina tries to get pregnant. And doesn't.

I found this novel very poignant, and surprising, yet surprisingly dull at moments. Like American life, like Deshi life. Sometimes things perk along predictably until they don't. What if you really are in love with the one who would have been easier to marry, but through some perverse ambition, or wild wish, you choose a foreign path.

The elements of realism are dead on in this book: the fear of strangers, and terrorism, the chronic layoffs and random rehires, the rootlessness of people and their families in the US compared to the sway of American values on what seems a healthier family culture in Bangladesh. I was engrossed in the narrative because toward the end there was suspense about who Amina would end up with. She was equally virtuous and maddening. Sometimes I wanted to slap her. Although Amina was a completely convincing character, the Americans were sadly lacking in depth compared to the Deshis. ( )

A multi-cultural story of a woman who meets her husband online and discovers what comes of it when traveling between her homeland and her new land. ( )

Read it in one day- Excellent book. Such an interesting story, so well written and completely different. Loved it. ( )

Amina and George meet on a dating site called AsianEuro: he's in his thirties, an unmarried engineer in Rochester, NY, and she lives with her parents in Bangladesh. After a long correspondence and a single visit, Amina moves to Rochester to marry George, earn U.S. citizenship, and bring her parents to join them. George and Amina, however, have different cultural expectations, as well as secrets that they're keeping from each other.

Freudenberger handles the cultural differences in the novel adeptly. George and Amina have different notions of family, each surprising to the other; yet once George relents to Amina's wish to have her parents live with them, she realizes that he may have had a point. The novel doesn't explore this territory, though, ending just as Amina brings her parents to the U.S.; this was a fine place to end, though I would have read another hundred pages to see how that transition went.

Those who enjoyed Freudenberger's collection Lucky Girls or Jhumpa Lahiri's stories or novels will likely enjoy The Newlyweds.

Quotes:

That was a characteristic of her grandmother's, too - one that her mother had always mocked and then suddenly folded into her own personality without even noticing. (98)

Was there a person who existed beneath languages? ...In a way, George had created her American self, and so it made sense that it was the only one he would see. (105)

What a strange thing, she thought, to find out one day that you had built your whole life on a mistake, and the next to discover that this fact would allow you to have your dearest wish. (156)

Even if neither of their motives had been pure, wasn't it possible that something pure had come of them now? (175)

It seemed incredible that it could be the same road, the same asphalt, that they had traveled so many times together. You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together - until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did. (207)

Then twenty years had slid away like water. (225)

"The problem was - I couldn't stop thinking of home. It's like a girl. She's perfect while you're away, and then you come back and she's changed so much." (Nasir, 249)

It was a question she'd been asked before, and she didn't have an answer. Why were some people attracted to what was unfamiliar, and others to what they knew? She thought it might have to do with how comfortable you were in your own life, how well you felt you belonged. (279)

At the same time she felt as if she'd entered herself again, the left-behind self who'd been waiting for her so long. (280)

Guilt was remorse for something you'd done, and she didn't feel that at all. (281)

Most children grew out of the notion that their mothers could see what was in their heads, but with her mother's reputation for clairvoyance, she'd never been able to discount the possibility entirely. (292)

And then, as sometimes happened, a casual prediction of her mother's became reality right before their eyes. (322)

The seconds were grinding down to nothing right in front of them. (333) ( )