Marriage Material

Sathnam Sanghera
Marriage Material

William Heinemann, 2013

The novel tells the story of three generations of a family, which emigrated from India in the mid-60s. The story from today is told by 35-year-old Arjan Banga, whose grandfather moved his Punjabi family from India to a small British town of Wolverhampton. Head of the family, Mr. Bains himself first moved to England, and when he was settled, he moved his wife and two daughters Kamaljit and Surinder.

To a job in a factory Bains prefer to keep his own shop, which is inherited and passed to Arjan.

At present our narrator became moderately successful graphic designer, settled in London, found a partner, a white girl Freya, and already engaged to her. The wedding is scheduled for December, as Arjan’s father died suddenly from, as police puts it, natural causes.

After his father's funeral store Arjan runs the store along with his mother Kamaljit. Death of the shop’s owner happens exactly at the time of the London riots, spreading later across the country. The shop is temporarily closed and Arjan realizes that his mother is old and alonr, she can’t manage and protect the shop. But this shop is all that his mother has, and she never agrees to sell it. Arjan, too, doesn’t want to, becuae the shop is a kind of a family heirloom.

After Freya offers to put Kamaljit in an apartment complex for the elderly, Arjan has a quarrel with the bride and goes to Wolverhampton. At work, he is given a six-month leave, and Arjan's back where he once ran away from.

Together with Kamaljit he runs the shop, they took turns behind the counter, manage the stock, although the shop brings a small profit. Arjan is daily faced with racism on the part of buyers, even once grabbing a mop - to fight back a violent buyer.

Despite its title, Marriage Material is far from the average romance novel. And to be quite accurate, it is not romance novel at all but high-quality contemporary prose – marriages included.
There are several marriages in the novel, but the main one would not happen. Arjat will break an engagement, cancel the wedding and the epilogue will leave us guessing. But it will be possible to compare the marriages that occurred and that didn’t.

The present story becomes clearer and clearer on the background of the past, stories of two sisters. Sanger asks: have a lot of things changed there? Marriage to a white girl is not considered a crime within the family anymore, castes is a thing of the past, Asians already can drink, smoke and, as well as to engage in sexual relations before marriage.

Arjan on the example of his fate shows that Asian community no longer holds one who wants to escape. And even if the parents object to your choice, no one will stop you. But the increase in freedom does not remove all the problems. Racism still remains, caste is transformed into shackles of family business, brains are still valued less than diligence and obedience.

Both storylines are spiced with humor, of course, Asian one. Arjan in his narrative presents himself as an object of ridicule, also sneering Asians and parodying the gangster image of his rival. In the plotline of the past humor is there thanks to Surinder’s naivety, smart girl who had been a victim of a sleaze talker.

Sanghera writes clever prose interspersed with sentimentality, but without the melodrama. His observation of the Asian way of life is shrill and accurate. Sanghera is able to mask the details: the death of Arjan’s father at the beginning of the novel is quickly forgotten, but then cleverly played up.

Smooth style helps no less smooth plot, quite intense, although quite predictable. In the afterword, the author writes that the storyline about two sisters is a remix of the early XX century novel. This does not affect the perception of the novel, and sometimes remix is better than the original.

The Banker’s Daughter

Emran Mian
The Banker’s Daughter

Harvill Secker, 2012

Hanna Mehdi is 20-something-year-old daughter of the former owner of a major bank in London. In is the beginning of 2008, and Hannah with her father, whom she calls Baba, for nearly three years have been living in Beirut, where they fled from England, when the bank collapsed. The bank, which was the largest Arab bank in the world, had collapsed under mysterious circumstances. People standing at the helm, managed to escape from London, and so far the public doesn’t known whether Baba lost all his money, along with all other depositors, or he shamelessly appropriated the depositors' money.

In Beirut, Hanna and her father lead a comfortable life. They live in a luxury hotel, Baba has his own yacht, Hanna wears expensive clothes. For days, Baba just drinks cocktails by the pool, and Hanna is not busy with anything special. From Beirut they will not be be forced to the interrogations, so Hanna's father is not worried that justice will reach him and his daughter here in Lebanon. But in Beirut the Mehdi family is still under cover, without revealing to anyone who they really are. Hanna graduated from the university as an art historian, pretending here that sge is an art dealer who she in general actually is. With no artistic talent, Hanna became an art dealer.

The novel opens with a scene when she sees on her father’s laptop a photo with cut-off head of a certain man on it. Hanna knows that her father and her uncle are capable of violence. She knows that in a world where her father lives, men do what they want, just to achieve their goals. But Hanna is not sure what this photo means. Maybe her father is a murderer and that he had cut off a man's head, but it is possible that someone is threatening him, frightening the old man. The girl is nervous, but does not dare to ask her father directly.

Debut novelist Mian is a man, but the novel’s written from the point of view of a woman, and it is clear that Mian coped with this challenge. While reading the book, you just do not feel that the author is of tune somewhere, or sings flat. Hanna Mehdi is a young woman, with woman's emotions, female logic, with opposition to the world of violent men, with a love of the father, which only a daughter may have. Mian made the heroine of the book not an artist, a person who creates art, but a dealer who is selling art. Choice of Hanna’s occupation emphasizes communication with her father (he and she are working with money), and some sort sensitivity, which should be characterized by a person who is close to the artistic community.

Hanna accepts everything that her father had done, forgives him, but at the same time she leaves the family. Violence, power, big games - it's not for her. The family finally broke up. Hannah is a person of modern times, a person who lives according to rational consciousness. Her father Baba is a man of the past, living by the laws of his ancestors. The banker’s daughter does not accept these old rules, she starts a new life, but she did not deny from her father, so, at the same time, she continues ancient traditions.

The novel is interesting as a slice of the British art world, and as a slice of life of high society in Britain. The author looks at the world of art and the world of big finance through the lens of the Asian world.

Novel, perhaps, does not have enough layers. The book is fairly linear, as flashbacks rather complement and reveal the characters, rather than add any story lines. Also, like it or not, but only Hanna and her father are people with good qualities, all the other characters are like the selection of almost cartoonish villains, even without guns.

Simple, but at the same time catchy prose covers simplicity of the story. The end here is open whuch just suits this book. It asks a lot of difficult questions answers for whose is not an easy find.