Marriage Material

February 1, 2016

Set in the English city of Wolverhampton, award-winning journalist Sanghera's first novel (after a memoir, The Boy with the Topknot) weaves an engaging tale describing the lives, marriages, and potential marriages of the Bains family, Asian Indians of the Sikh faith who run a convenience store. The modern-day story line centers on Arjan, grandson of the store's original owner. Upon his father's death, Arjan leaves his job in London and returns to the family business to assist his ailing mother. In alternating chapters, Sanghera discloses details of the family's past, showing how Asian Indians were perceived as minorities and how caste and cultural expectations affected the lives of Arjan's mother and his Aunt Surinder, the black sheep of the family, who eloped with a salesman named Jim O'Connor. Arjan himself is engaged to an Englishwoman, and past and present intersect midway through the novel when he meets Surinder and considers what his life could be like with his fiancee, Freya. VERDICT Offering an acute look at Indian culture in Britain, this novel also serves as a cultural commentary on the lives and expectations of families of all backgrounds. An enjoyable and thought-provoking read.--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

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Starred review from November 1, 2015
From the U.K., a funny, smart, and richly layered debut novel about an immigrant family. Arjan Banga, the only child of a Punjabi couple who run a benighted convenience store in a crummy town in the West Midlands, thinks he's escaped his past. He works as a graphic designer in London. He's engaged to a white woman named Freya. He's practically post-racial. But when his father's sudden death from what is supposedly a heart attack calls him back to Wolverhampton to help his mother, he's instantly sucked back into the world he left behind. He spends "fifteen hours a day being patronised ('You. Speak. EXCELLENT. English'); having [his] name mutilated ('Ar-jan, is it? Mind if I call you Andy?'); dealing with people paying for Mars bars with 20 notes, ...dishing out copies of Asian Babes to shameless septuagenarians, ...being called a 'smelly Paki' by people reeking of booze and wee; and dealing with seemingly endless chit-chat." His only friend in town is a guy he grew up with, Ranjit Dhanda, whose own family's neighboring establishment has become a successful superstore while Ranjit himself has morphed into a ridiculous wannabe gangsta, "rebranding himself as 'Jay' " and speaking in a faux Jamaican dialect. Interwoven with the story of Arjan's miserable experience in Wolverhampton is the history of his parents' generation, which decades earlier had similar struggles with assimilation and racism, with familial duty and the siren call of freedom. Outlaw marriage is at the center of both stories, as is the political history of Wolverhampton, which is the author's real-life hometown and also the focus of his previous book, a memoir (The Boy with the Topknot, 2009). Sanghera's precise, hilarious rendition of voices and cultural details is the signal pleasure of a novel rich in humor, history, and heart.

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Starred review from January 1, 2016
First-time novelist Sanghera connects the intricate, meandering, warmhearted, and wise saga of Arjan Banga's family to his grandfather's Wolverhampton convenience store. With ease, Sanghera tosses his novel from Arjan's present day, where he flounders and flails in his attempt to cope with the sudden death of his father, back 30 years to his mother and aunt's coming-of-age in and above the same corner shop in which Arjan finds himself, somewhat awkwardly, standing behind the counter. Is it his grief alone that has postponed Arjan's wedding to Freya, his lovely, loving, and, significantly, white fiancee? Or is there something larger, and unchangeable, that's keeping them apart? This unwinding ribbon of a story is tied to the racial politics of the West Midlands in the 1960s and 1970s and the turmoil that caused Arjan's family to leave India for England. Smart, feeling, and funny Arjan observes his mother, aunt, and friends with gracious care, while sharing the sometimes subtle, oftentimes not, profundities of his life as a young British man so obviously shaped by, and indebted to, his Sikh immigrant parents. Sanghera reaches hearts and minds with an unforgettably companionable narrator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)