false 3 2 false false Mon Nov 16 09:22:29 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 04:57:28 -0800 2009
Spanning the eighties to the start of the 21st century (building up, inevitably, to 9/11) this concerns a young Bangladeshi woman who is sent to London to marry an older man. It details the world she finds, the mix of cultures she encounters, the family she raises and the affair she embarks on with a much younger radical. The passion of their romance is incredibly well written, with the confusion a housewife being consumed by feelings she’d never had before tangible on the page. Similarly well done are the scenes detailing the rising ethnic tension, with the riot scene being particularly excellent.

However, the reason this only gets three stars is that I never thought the characters raised themselves about caricature level. The husband doesn’t seem to develop at all over the years we know him, while the young lover never seems fully formed at all. As such, despite all the passion of the prose, it’s hard to really care about this eternal triangle.

For all its good points, the lack of convincing characters to empathise with means that it’s like looking through a window (or into a snow globe, a recurring motif in the book) and being entranced by the world you find there but never fully engaging with it.]]>