From Nell Freudenberger, one of America's most dazzling talents, comes The Newlyweds, an utterly captivating cross-continental love story Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. It's a twenty-first-century romance that echoes ancient traditions - the arranged marriages of her home country. And though George falls for Amina because she doesn't 'play games', they will both hide a secret, and vital, part of their lives from each other. A brilliantly observed, wry and yet deeply moving novel about the exhilerations - and complications - of getting, and staying, wed. Reminiscent of Anne Tyler, Curtis Sittenfeld's The American Wife and Jennifer Egan, The Newlyweds is a tour de force - a novel as rich with misunderstandings as it is with unlikely connections. 'Every minute I was away from this book I was longing to be back in the world she created', Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder 'A marvellous book', Kiran Desai, winner of the MAN Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novel The Dissident, (longlisted for the Orange Prize) and the story collection Lucky Girls, winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and shortlisted for the Orange New Writers' Prize and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. She was named a New Yorker '20 Under 40' writer and one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The Newlyweds
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1
She hadn’t heard the mailman, but Amina decided to go out and check. Just in case. If anyone saw her, they would know that there was someone in the house now during the day while George was at work. They would watch Amina hurrying coatless to the mailbox, still wearing her bedroom slippers, and would conclude that this was her home. She had come to stay.
The mailbox was new. She had ordered it herself with George’s credit card, from mailboxes.com, and she had not chosen the cheapest one. George had said that they needed something sturdy, and so Amina had turned off the Deshi part of her brain and ordered the heavy-duty rural model, in glossy black, for $90. She had not done the conversion into taka, and when it arrived, wrapped in plastic, surrounded by Styrofoam chips, and carefully tucked into its corrugated cardboard box—a box that most Americans would simply throw away but that Amina could not help storing in the basement, in a growing pile behind George’s Bowflex—she had taken pleasure in its size and solidity. She showed George the detachable red flag that you could move up or down to indicate whether you had letters for collection.
“That wasn’t even in the picture,” she told him. “It just came with it, free.”
The old mailbox had been bashed in by thugs. The first time had been right after Amina arrived from Bangladesh, one Thursday night in March. George had left for work on Friday morning, but he hadn’t gotten even as far as his car when he came back through the kitchen door, uncharacteristically furious.
“Goddamn thugs. Potheads. Smoking weed and destroying private property. And the police don’t do a fucking thing.”
“Thugs are here? In Pittsford?” She couldn’t understand it, and that made him angrier.
“Thugs! Vandals. Hooligans—whatever you want to call them. Uneducated pieces of human garbage.” Then he went down to the basement to get his tools, because you had to take the mailbox off its post and repair the damage right away. If the thugs saw that you hadn’t fixed it, that was an invitation.
The flag was still raised, and when she double-checked, sticking her hand all the way into its black depths, there was only the stack of bills George had left on his way to work. The thugs did not actually steal the mail, and so her green card, which was supposed to arrive this month, would have been safe even if she could have forgotten to check. “Thugs” had a different meaning in America, and that was why she’d been confused. George had been talking about kids, troublemakers from East Rochester High, while Amina had been thinking of dacoits: bandits who haunted the highways and made it unsafe to take the bus. She had lived in Rochester six months now—long enough to know that there were no bandits on Pittsford roads at night.
American English was different from the language she’d learned at Maple Leaf International in Dhaka, but she was lucky because George corrected her and kept her from making embarrassing mistakes. Americans always went to the bathroom, never the loo. They did not live in flats or stow anything in the boot of the car, and under no circumstances did they ever pop outside to smoke a fag.
Maple Leaf was where she first learned to use the computer, and the computer was how she met George, a thirty-four-year-old SWM who was looking for a wife. George had explained to her that he had always wanted to get married. He had dated women in Rochester, but often found them silly, and had such a strong aversion to perfume that he couldn’t sit across the table from a woman who was wearing it. George’s cousin Kim had called him “picky,” and had suggested that he might have better luck on the Internet, where he could clarify his requirements from the beginning.
George told Amina that he had been waiting for a special connection. He was a romantic, and he didn’t want to compromise on just anyone. It wasn’t until his colleague Ed told him that he’d met his wife, Min, on AsianEuro.com that he had thought of trying that particular site. When he had received the first e-mail from Amina, he said that he’d “had a feeling.” When Amina asked what had given him the feeling, he said that she was “straightforward” and that she did not play games, unlike some women he knew. Which women were those, she had asked, but George said he was talking about women he’d known a long time ago, when he was in college.
She hadn’t been testing him: she had really wanted to know, only because her own experience had been so different. She had been contacted by several men before George, and each time she’d wondered if this was the person she would marry. Once she and George had started e-mailing each other exclusively, she had wondered the same thing about him, and she’d continued wondering even after he booked the flight to Dhaka in order to meet her. She had wondered that first night when he ate with her parents at the wobbly table covered by the plasticized map of the world—which her father discreetly steadied by placing his elbow somewhere in the neighborhood of Sudan—and during the agonizing hours they had spent in the homes of their Dhaka friends and relatives, talking to each other in English while everyone sat around them and watched. It wasn’t until she was actually on the plane to Washington, D.C., wearing the University of Rochester sweatshirt he’d given her, that she had finally become convinced it was going to happen.
It was the first week of September, but the leaves were already starting to turn yellow. George said that the fall was coming early, making up for the fact that last spring had been unusually warm: a gift to Amina from the year 2005—her first in America. By the time she arrived in March most of the snow was gone, and so she had not yet experienced a real Rochester winter.
In those first weeks she had been pleased to notice that her husband had a large collection of books: biographies (Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, Cary Grant, Mary Queen of Scots, John Lennon, and Napoléon) as well as classic novels by Charles Dickens, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Jane Austen. George told Amina that he was a reader but that he couldn’t understand people who waded through all of the garbage they published these days, when it was possible to spend your whole life reading books the greatness of which had already been established.
George did have some books from his childhood, when he’d been interested in fantasy novels, especially retellings of the Arthurian legend and anything to do with dragons. There was also a book his mother had given him, 1001 Facts for Kids, which he claimed had “basically got him through the stupidity of elementary school.” In high school he had put away the 1001 Facts in favor of a game called Dungeons & Dragons, but there were now websites that served the same purpose, and George retained a storehouse of interesting tidbits that he periodically related to Amina.
“Did you know that there is an actual society made up of people who believe the earth is flat?”
“Did you know that one out of twenty people has an extra rib?”
“Did you know that most lipstick contains fish scales?”
For several weeks Amina had answered “No” to each of these questions, until she gradually understood that this was another colloquialism—perhaps more typical of her new husband than of the English language—simply a way of introducing a new subject that did not demand an actual response.
“Did you know that seventy percent of men and sixty percent of women admit to having been unfaithful to their spouse, but that eighty percent of men say they would marry the same woman if they had the chance to live their lives over again?”
“What do the women say?” Amina had asked, but George’s website hadn’t cited that statistic.
George had said that they could use the money he’d been “saving for a rainy day” for her to begin studying at Monroe Community College next year, and as soon as her green card arrived, Amina planned to start looking for a job. She wanted to contribute to the cost of her education, even if it was just a small amount. George supported the idea of her continuing her studies, but only once she had a specific goal in mind. It wasn’t the degree that counted but what you did with it; he believed that too many Americans wasted time and money on college simply for the sake of a fancy piece of paper. And so Amina told him that she’d always dreamed of becoming a real teacher. This was not untrue, in the sense that she had hoped her tutoring jobs at home might one day lead to a more sustained and distinguished kind of work. What she didn’t mention to George was how important the U.S. college degree would be to everyone she knew at home—a tangible symbol of what she had accomplished halfway across the world.
She was standing at the sink, chopping eggplant for dinner, when she saw their neighbor Annie Snyder coming up Skytop Lane, pushing an infant in a stroller and talking to her little boy, Lawson, who was pedaling a low plastic bike. The garish colors and balloon-like shapes of that toy reminded Amina of a commercial she had seen on TV soon after she’d arrived in Rochester, in which real people were eating breakfast in a cartoon house. Annie had introduced herself when Amina had moved in and invited her out for coffee. Then she’d asked if Amina had any babysitting experience, because she was always looking for someone to watch the kids for an hour or two while she did the shopping or went to the gym.
She asks that because you’re from... --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .
She hadn’t heard the mailman, but Amina decided to go out and check. Just in case. If anyone saw her, they would know that there was someone in the house now during the day while George was at work. They would watch Amina hurrying coatless to the mailbox, still wearing her bedroom slippers, and would conclude that this was her home. She had come to stay.
The mailbox was new. She had ordered it herself with George’s credit card, from mailboxes.com, and she had not chosen the cheapest one. George had said that they needed something sturdy, and so Amina had turned off the Deshi part of her brain and ordered the heavy-duty rural model, in glossy black, for $90. She had not done the conversion into taka, and when it arrived, wrapped in plastic, surrounded by Styrofoam chips, and carefully tucked into its corrugated cardboard box—a box that most Americans would simply throw away but that Amina could not help storing in the basement, in a growing pile behind George’s Bowflex—she had taken pleasure in its size and solidity. She showed George the detachable red flag that you could move up or down to indicate whether you had letters for collection.
“That wasn’t even in the picture,” she told him. “It just came with it, free.”
The old mailbox had been bashed in by thugs. The first time had been right after Amina arrived from Bangladesh, one Thursday night in March. George had left for work on Friday morning, but he hadn’t gotten even as far as his car when he came back through the kitchen door, uncharacteristically furious.
“Goddamn thugs. Potheads. Smoking weed and destroying private property. And the police don’t do a fucking thing.”
“Thugs are here? In Pittsford?” She couldn’t understand it, and that made him angrier.
“Thugs! Vandals. Hooligans—whatever you want to call them. Uneducated pieces of human garbage.” Then he went down to the basement to get his tools, because you had to take the mailbox off its post and repair the damage right away. If the thugs saw that you hadn’t fixed it, that was an invitation.
The flag was still raised, and when she double-checked, sticking her hand all the way into its black depths, there was only the stack of bills George had left on his way to work. The thugs did not actually steal the mail, and so her green card, which was supposed to arrive this month, would have been safe even if she could have forgotten to check. “Thugs” had a different meaning in America, and that was why she’d been confused. George had been talking about kids, troublemakers from East Rochester High, while Amina had been thinking of dacoits: bandits who haunted the highways and made it unsafe to take the bus. She had lived in Rochester six months now—long enough to know that there were no bandits on Pittsford roads at night.
American English was different from the language she’d learned at Maple Leaf International in Dhaka, but she was lucky because George corrected her and kept her from making embarrassing mistakes. Americans always went to the bathroom, never the loo. They did not live in flats or stow anything in the boot of the car, and under no circumstances did they ever pop outside to smoke a fag.
Maple Leaf was where she first learned to use the computer, and the computer was how she met George, a thirty-four-year-old SWM who was looking for a wife. George had explained to her that he had always wanted to get married. He had dated women in Rochester, but often found them silly, and had such a strong aversion to perfume that he couldn’t sit across the table from a woman who was wearing it. George’s cousin Kim had called him “picky,” and had suggested that he might have better luck on the Internet, where he could clarify his requirements from the beginning.
George told Amina that he had been waiting for a special connection. He was a romantic, and he didn’t want to compromise on just anyone. It wasn’t until his colleague Ed told him that he’d met his wife, Min, on AsianEuro.com that he had thought of trying that particular site. When he had received the first e-mail from Amina, he said that he’d “had a feeling.” When Amina asked what had given him the feeling, he said that she was “straightforward” and that she did not play games, unlike some women he knew. Which women were those, she had asked, but George said he was talking about women he’d known a long time ago, when he was in college.
She hadn’t been testing him: she had really wanted to know, only because her own experience had been so different. She had been contacted by several men before George, and each time she’d wondered if this was the person she would marry. Once she and George had started e-mailing each other exclusively, she had wondered the same thing about him, and she’d continued wondering even after he booked the flight to Dhaka in order to meet her. She had wondered that first night when he ate with her parents at the wobbly table covered by the plasticized map of the world—which her father discreetly steadied by placing his elbow somewhere in the neighborhood of Sudan—and during the agonizing hours they had spent in the homes of their Dhaka friends and relatives, talking to each other in English while everyone sat around them and watched. It wasn’t until she was actually on the plane to Washington, D.C., wearing the University of Rochester sweatshirt he’d given her, that she had finally become convinced it was going to happen.
It was the first week of September, but the leaves were already starting to turn yellow. George said that the fall was coming early, making up for the fact that last spring had been unusually warm: a gift to Amina from the year 2005—her first in America. By the time she arrived in March most of the snow was gone, and so she had not yet experienced a real Rochester winter.
In those first weeks she had been pleased to notice that her husband had a large collection of books: biographies (Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, Cary Grant, Mary Queen of Scots, John Lennon, and Napoléon) as well as classic novels by Charles Dickens, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Jane Austen. George told Amina that he was a reader but that he couldn’t understand people who waded through all of the garbage they published these days, when it was possible to spend your whole life reading books the greatness of which had already been established.
George did have some books from his childhood, when he’d been interested in fantasy novels, especially retellings of the Arthurian legend and anything to do with dragons. There was also a book his mother had given him, 1001 Facts for Kids, which he claimed had “basically got him through the stupidity of elementary school.” In high school he had put away the 1001 Facts in favor of a game called Dungeons & Dragons, but there were now websites that served the same purpose, and George retained a storehouse of interesting tidbits that he periodically related to Amina.
“Did you know that there is an actual society made up of people who believe the earth is flat?”
“Did you know that one out of twenty people has an extra rib?”
“Did you know that most lipstick contains fish scales?”
For several weeks Amina had answered “No” to each of these questions, until she gradually understood that this was another colloquialism—perhaps more typical of her new husband than of the English language—simply a way of introducing a new subject that did not demand an actual response.
“Did you know that seventy percent of men and sixty percent of women admit to having been unfaithful to their spouse, but that eighty percent of men say they would marry the same woman if they had the chance to live their lives over again?”
“What do the women say?” Amina had asked, but George’s website hadn’t cited that statistic.
George had said that they could use the money he’d been “saving for a rainy day” for her to begin studying at Monroe Community College next year, and as soon as her green card arrived, Amina planned to start looking for a job. She wanted to contribute to the cost of her education, even if it was just a small amount. George supported the idea of her continuing her studies, but only once she had a specific goal in mind. It wasn’t the degree that counted but what you did with it; he believed that too many Americans wasted time and money on college simply for the sake of a fancy piece of paper. And so Amina told him that she’d always dreamed of becoming a real teacher. This was not untrue, in the sense that she had hoped her tutoring jobs at home might one day lead to a more sustained and distinguished kind of work. What she didn’t mention to George was how important the U.S. college degree would be to everyone she knew at home—a tangible symbol of what she had accomplished halfway across the world.
She was standing at the sink, chopping eggplant for dinner, when she saw their neighbor Annie Snyder coming up Skytop Lane, pushing an infant in a stroller and talking to her little boy, Lawson, who was pedaling a low plastic bike. The garish colors and balloon-like shapes of that toy reminded Amina of a commercial she had seen on TV soon after she’d arrived in Rochester, in which real people were eating breakfast in a cartoon house. Annie had introduced herself when Amina had moved in and invited her out for coffee. Then she’d asked if Amina had any babysitting experience, because she was always looking for someone to watch the kids for an hour or two while she did the shopping or went to the gym.
She asks that because you’re from... --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .
Revue de presse
A wonderful, funny, inventive novel that takes you slowly by surprise the more you read. Its themes of self delusion, misplaced hope and the mystery that is true love stayed with me for a long time afterwards. Highly recommended. (Red (Book of the Month) )
A powerful sense of empathy, of being able to imagine what it is to be soemone else, to feel what someone else feels (Mohsin Hamid )
This classic tale of missed chances, crushing errors of judgment, and scarring sacrifices, all compounded by cultural differences, is perfectly pitched, piercingly funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking (Booklist starred review )
Every minute I was away from this book I was longing to be back in the world she created (Ann Patchett, Author Of 'state Of Wonder' )
There is an incandescent talent at work here (The Times )
Wise, timely, ripe with humour and complexity, The Newlyweds is one of the most believable love stories of our young century (Gary Shteyngart, Author Of 'super Sad True Love Story' )
The intrigue and small disappointments of marriage are painstakingly captured. (Psychologies )
A Fresh and modern look at relationships, told with heart. (Elle )
A charming and serious tale of marriage, family and identity. Its prose style is intimate, almost conspiratorial... threading its arm around the reader confidently. The writing is clear and spare... yet Freudenberger's investigation into what makes relationships work... is complex and sophisticated... Freudenberger approaches her subject with great sensitivity, a heavy sense of the seriousness of life - and much wry humour. (Independent on Sunday )
There are some piercing cultural observations... the chapters zip along with purpose and the novel flits effortlessly between the false intimacy of suburban America and the closely knit gossipy communities of Dhaka (Independent )
Accomplished (Guardian )
A powerful sense of empathy, of being able to imagine what it is to be soemone else, to feel what someone else feels (Mohsin Hamid )
This classic tale of missed chances, crushing errors of judgment, and scarring sacrifices, all compounded by cultural differences, is perfectly pitched, piercingly funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking (Booklist starred review )
Every minute I was away from this book I was longing to be back in the world she created (Ann Patchett, Author Of 'state Of Wonder' )
There is an incandescent talent at work here (The Times )
Wise, timely, ripe with humour and complexity, The Newlyweds is one of the most believable love stories of our young century (Gary Shteyngart, Author Of 'super Sad True Love Story' )
The intrigue and small disappointments of marriage are painstakingly captured. (Psychologies )
A Fresh and modern look at relationships, told with heart. (Elle )
A charming and serious tale of marriage, family and identity. Its prose style is intimate, almost conspiratorial... threading its arm around the reader confidently. The writing is clear and spare... yet Freudenberger's investigation into what makes relationships work... is complex and sophisticated... Freudenberger approaches her subject with great sensitivity, a heavy sense of the seriousness of life - and much wry humour. (Independent on Sunday )
There are some piercing cultural observations... the chapters zip along with purpose and the novel flits effortlessly between the false intimacy of suburban America and the closely knit gossipy communities of Dhaka (Independent )
Accomplished (Guardian )
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93 internautes sur 101 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
3.0 étoiles sur 5
Unconvincing and, in many ways, incomplete.
23 mars 2012
Par liat2768
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié|Commentaire Amazon Vine™
(De quoi s'agit-il?)
The story, from the small blurb on my reader's edition, initially seems an intriguing one. An inter-racial, inter-national, inter-religious couple falls in love on-line and, once married, sorts out what marriage is all about. However, characterizing this book as a" richly observed story of love and marriage" seems to me to be a gross misrepresentation. This is not a book about marriage; it is a book about one particular, marriage which is mostly a side note to the story of a determined woman's desire to bring herself and her parents to live in the 'First World'. Love for each other plays a very small part in the actions of the two partners.
I found the first quarter of the book to be the weakest due to a very evident lack of research. The author's non Bangla background comes through very strongly in the depiction of the main character's motivations, speech, familial expectations, etc. which sound completely American. I felt that the author did not really get into the head of her Bangladeshi heroine who, supposedly, was still close to her roots in the village. Cross cultural differences (beyond just speaking English mildly differently) are not explored and the dialogue among the Bangladeshi family could belong to an American drawing room. Amina's parents' support for her plan to find a husband online (so that all of them can emigrate to the US), their willingness to send her overseas with a man they have only met for a week and the fact that a fiancée visa to the US was arranged within a week was mindboggling.
Amina's arrival in the US is a casual event. It is as if she just moved from one state to another - or switched from Europe to the US. Yes small differences pop up but for the most part it is smooth sailing. If there is a shocking effect on people from the US when they visit third world countries, things are equally shocking going the other way. The author misses the chance to explore the trauma of immigration and instead casually points out a few differences as if she is sprinkling in anecdotes heard from real immigrants to try and make the book more believable.
What the author does initially try to do is explore the fact that this is a marriage between two people of different faiths. Islam, however, is an encroaching threat in this book and something that Amina promptly pushes out of her life in the US. George's promised conversion to Islam falls by the wayside and the exploration of their differences in religion fizzles out quickly. Amina seems to only encounter flat one dimensional Americans without layers of personality. Kim is a stereotypical hippie, yogi, backpacker; Cathy's character is a a depository of all things ignorant and intolerant, her co workers are never fully drawn in and George - well, George is so mildly drawn as to be non existent!
Where the author really hits her stride is in the last quarter of the book where the marriage (and pathetic George) fade in to the background and Amina returns to Bangladesh to bring her parents back to the US. Her longing for the old and familiar, even if it is dangerous and filthy, will speak to any emigrant. The beauty of the Bangladeshi countryside is all the more obvious to her for her knowledge that she may never see it again. While the old traditions make family life so constrained and always open to criticism, she compares it to the loneliness of living in the US and questions which way is better.
However, the tension created at the end is not enough to save the book. Amina's wishy washy attitude towards her own marriage, inconsistencies in the text, threads that are begun and then lost and Amina's very confusing hopes regarding her cousin made the book seem almost unfinished when it finally ended. My biggest question was not what happened to Amina, or her parents but what happened to George? His character was the least developed in the book. We barely get a glimpse at him, physical, psychological or in dialogue. He ends up being background music to Amina's waltz through life and his desires, hopes and dreams always take the back seat. His grand deception seems more like dirty laundry compared to what Amina is planning. Vague but always supportive, stereotypical but mostly harmless he ended up being the one I could sympathize with instead of Amina who only came across as a scheming green card hunter of the worst kind. George's only importance in her life seemed to be as a source of income and a way to get her citizenship.
In brief, this is not a book about marriage - it is about how marriage can be used as a means to an end.
I found the first quarter of the book to be the weakest due to a very evident lack of research. The author's non Bangla background comes through very strongly in the depiction of the main character's motivations, speech, familial expectations, etc. which sound completely American. I felt that the author did not really get into the head of her Bangladeshi heroine who, supposedly, was still close to her roots in the village. Cross cultural differences (beyond just speaking English mildly differently) are not explored and the dialogue among the Bangladeshi family could belong to an American drawing room. Amina's parents' support for her plan to find a husband online (so that all of them can emigrate to the US), their willingness to send her overseas with a man they have only met for a week and the fact that a fiancée visa to the US was arranged within a week was mindboggling.
Amina's arrival in the US is a casual event. It is as if she just moved from one state to another - or switched from Europe to the US. Yes small differences pop up but for the most part it is smooth sailing. If there is a shocking effect on people from the US when they visit third world countries, things are equally shocking going the other way. The author misses the chance to explore the trauma of immigration and instead casually points out a few differences as if she is sprinkling in anecdotes heard from real immigrants to try and make the book more believable.
What the author does initially try to do is explore the fact that this is a marriage between two people of different faiths. Islam, however, is an encroaching threat in this book and something that Amina promptly pushes out of her life in the US. George's promised conversion to Islam falls by the wayside and the exploration of their differences in religion fizzles out quickly. Amina seems to only encounter flat one dimensional Americans without layers of personality. Kim is a stereotypical hippie, yogi, backpacker; Cathy's character is a a depository of all things ignorant and intolerant, her co workers are never fully drawn in and George - well, George is so mildly drawn as to be non existent!
Where the author really hits her stride is in the last quarter of the book where the marriage (and pathetic George) fade in to the background and Amina returns to Bangladesh to bring her parents back to the US. Her longing for the old and familiar, even if it is dangerous and filthy, will speak to any emigrant. The beauty of the Bangladeshi countryside is all the more obvious to her for her knowledge that she may never see it again. While the old traditions make family life so constrained and always open to criticism, she compares it to the loneliness of living in the US and questions which way is better.
However, the tension created at the end is not enough to save the book. Amina's wishy washy attitude towards her own marriage, inconsistencies in the text, threads that are begun and then lost and Amina's very confusing hopes regarding her cousin made the book seem almost unfinished when it finally ended. My biggest question was not what happened to Amina, or her parents but what happened to George? His character was the least developed in the book. We barely get a glimpse at him, physical, psychological or in dialogue. He ends up being background music to Amina's waltz through life and his desires, hopes and dreams always take the back seat. His grand deception seems more like dirty laundry compared to what Amina is planning. Vague but always supportive, stereotypical but mostly harmless he ended up being the one I could sympathize with instead of Amina who only came across as a scheming green card hunter of the worst kind. George's only importance in her life seemed to be as a source of income and a way to get her citizenship.
In brief, this is not a book about marriage - it is about how marriage can be used as a means to an end.
41 internautes sur 48 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
4.0 étoiles sur 5
First rate family drama
21 mars 2012
Par moose_of_many_waters
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié|Commentaire Amazon Vine™
(De quoi s'agit-il?)
From a modest premise - a Bangladeshi woman comes to America to wed her online match - Nell Freudenberger has created a poignant, vividly drawn drama of how couples live today. I can't vouch for whether the cultural details are accurate - my exposure to Bangladesh consists of having one Bangladeshi employee and working in the country for a very strange week - but the emotional interactions ring true. Amina is a bright woman whose dreams may seem modest by American standards, but for someone coming from her near-destitute background they are indeed "reaching for the stars". How she goes about trying to achieve her dreams - quietly, stubbornly, and pragmatically - makes this story shine.
Freudenberger has managed to create a world that, while quotidian in its essence, is still fascinating to observe. She's filled it with fully three-dimensional characters who for the most part have no great illusions of their place in the world. In their own messy way, they try to make the best of their lives. The Newlyweds doesn't try to grab you with poetic prose or heightened drama. It's a sly book that works by providing the reader a window as to how ordinary people live. The events that transpire are often filled with disappointment and if you're looking for a hope conquers all kind of story you won't find it here. If I have any qualms about this book, it's in the portrait of the husband, George. While I know many electrical engineers and many are in fact as wooden as George, it would have been more interesting if he wasn't quite so typical and had some real emotional range.
Nell Freudenberger is a first rate talent who well deserves the praise she's received (and will undoubtedly receive from this novel when it comes out). It may be that she is more of a "writer's writer" than someone who will ever find a major audience. There is a level of detail and richness in this subtle book that is rare and exemplary.
Freudenberger has managed to create a world that, while quotidian in its essence, is still fascinating to observe. She's filled it with fully three-dimensional characters who for the most part have no great illusions of their place in the world. In their own messy way, they try to make the best of their lives. The Newlyweds doesn't try to grab you with poetic prose or heightened drama. It's a sly book that works by providing the reader a window as to how ordinary people live. The events that transpire are often filled with disappointment and if you're looking for a hope conquers all kind of story you won't find it here. If I have any qualms about this book, it's in the portrait of the husband, George. While I know many electrical engineers and many are in fact as wooden as George, it would have been more interesting if he wasn't quite so typical and had some real emotional range.
Nell Freudenberger is a first rate talent who well deserves the praise she's received (and will undoubtedly receive from this novel when it comes out). It may be that she is more of a "writer's writer" than someone who will ever find a major audience. There is a level of detail and richness in this subtle book that is rare and exemplary.
29 internautes sur 33 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
3.0 étoiles sur 5
Complicated multi-cultural marriage
26 mars 2012
Par asiana
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié|Commentaire Amazon Vine™
(De quoi s'agit-il?)
Dhaka, Bangladesh is home to Amina Mazid until she starts an on-line relationship with George Stillman, who lives in Rochester, New York. Although each has something hidden in their pasts, Amina, with the blessing of her parents, moves to what she thinks will bring her a happier life than what she's experiencing in Dhaka.
The novel is interesting in showing how the cultural differences between the young couple invite both laughter and anger, but I cannot imagine Bangladeshi parents encouraging their only child to emigrate and marry a non-Muslim man about whom she knows very little.
There are many characters in this book, but none of them became "real" to me, including Amina and George and the storyline was akin to a poor TV soap opera. The winding alleyways, the crowded shops, the smells of the Bangladeshi markets never became alive nor did the small city ways of Rochester. It is an OK novel, but nothing special.
The novel is interesting in showing how the cultural differences between the young couple invite both laughter and anger, but I cannot imagine Bangladeshi parents encouraging their only child to emigrate and marry a non-Muslim man about whom she knows very little.
There are many characters in this book, but none of them became "real" to me, including Amina and George and the storyline was akin to a poor TV soap opera. The winding alleyways, the crowded shops, the smells of the Bangladeshi markets never became alive nor did the small city ways of Rochester. It is an OK novel, but nothing special.
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