Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The newlyweds, by Nell Freudenberger


An only child and now approaching her mid-twenties, Amina lives with her parents in Bangladesh.  Her father has been on a downwardly mobile spiral for years.  Money wasn’t available for her to go to school beyond the age of thirteen.  However, an avid scholar, she has studied alone and actually passed the high school exams and found work tutoring English.  When Nasir, who once might have been considered a suitable match, returns from working in England changed by the experience into a very religious man, Amina begins to explore Internet dating.  She meets George, an engineer from Rochester NY, and moves to the States to marry him and begin a new life.  There she also meets George’s cousin Kim (who was adopted and is not a blood relation), a wild child who has a failed marriage to a handsome, wealthy Indian man in her past.  Still childless three years after her marriage, Amina returns to Bangladesh to bring her aging parents back to Rochester.  But both George and Amina have secrets that may threaten their lives and doom their relationship which come to a head during her trip home.  Written by an American but primarily from Amina’s point of view, I was taken by the way the author was able to enter the inner world of an immigrant in America and also convincingly depict the lives of her family, only just a few steps removed from village life in Bangladesh.   Recommended.   337 pp.

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