Two novels in which a marriage of a twenty-something man and woman from superficially similar backgrounds shows early signs of strain. In the first, between Muslims in contemporary London, the politics of religion are problematic right from the start; in the second, life gets tough when a new mother follows her journalist husband to a posting in newly-independent Ukraine. All harbour secrets, communication suffers and trust is hard to find. But, with youth on their side, they’ll take something from the experience, whether or not the marriages survive.
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Asghar and Zahra by Sameer Rahim
Asghar and Zahra’s marriage is unusual in their community: neither a love match nor arranged by their parents, but something in between. That might account for why it falters so soon after the wedding in a London mosque: they don’t know each other well enough to slip into cosy cohabitation, but their families, divided by opposing loyalties to old and new mosques, don’t appreciate how much support the young people need to make it work.
Asghar thinks he’s been in love with Zahra since childhood, so sees no reason not to propose after two chaste but unchaperoned ‘dates’. Slightly older, and more worldly, having been away to university in Cambridge, she is shocked by his offer, having perceived their meetings as a catch-up between old friends. But, on the rebound from a relationship with a fellow student, a Hindu, who took things too far for her liking, Zahra accepts, believing that Asghar will keep her safely tied to the community, while allowing her the freedoms her education, and her job in corporate banking, have led her to expect.
A few weeks in, they’re both still virgins, but it’s the ideological differences, in their interpretations of Islam, that push them apart. On honeymoon in Granada, Asghar is hurt by the airbrushing of Islam out of the city’s history (the origins of which I read about in Court of Lions), his outrage further enflamed by a charismatic character they meet at the mosque. (I got quite excited about the Granada mosque, as I’m sure my friend who lives there attended an open day when it first opened.) When the relationship continues back in London, the reader wonders if he might be heading towards becoming a ‘fundo’, as Zahra would call it. (See Godsend by John Wray for a fictional ‘fundo’.)
But Sameer Rahim’s novel, like Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons, is about ordinary tensions within British Muslim communities and, in this case, more of a coming-of-age story. Thanks to John Murray for my review copy.
Asghar thinks he’s been in love with Zahra since childhood, so sees no reason not to propose after two chaste but unchaperoned ‘dates’. Slightly older, and more worldly, having been away to university in Cambridge, she is shocked by his offer, having perceived their meetings as a catch-up between old friends. But, on the rebound from a relationship with a fellow student, a Hindu, who took things too far for her liking, Zahra accepts, believing that Asghar will keep her safely tied to the community, while allowing her the freedoms her education, and her job in corporate banking, have led her to expect.
A few weeks in, they’re both still virgins, but it’s the ideological differences, in their interpretations of Islam, that push them apart. On honeymoon in Granada, Asghar is hurt by the airbrushing of Islam out of the city’s history (the origins of which I read about in Court of Lions), his outrage further enflamed by a charismatic character they meet at the mosque. (I got quite excited about the Granada mosque, as I’m sure my friend who lives there attended an open day when it first opened.) When the relationship continues back in London, the reader wonders if he might be heading towards becoming a ‘fundo’, as Zahra would call it. (See Godsend by John Wray for a fictional ‘fundo’.)
But Sameer Rahim’s novel, like Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons, is about ordinary tensions within British Muslim communities and, in this case, more of a coming-of-age story. Thanks to John Murray for my review copy.
Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan
Rachel and Lucas haven’t been married long when he gets his first posting as a journalist abroad. When she joins him in Kiev in October 1992, their son, Ivan, is only three months old. Lucas has signed a year’s lease on a thirteenth-floor flat with a glassed-in balcony but, where he perceives an eyrie in which to smoke and observe the city, she imagines the baby tumbling to his death.
They’ve arrived in Ukraine too late for the big news stories: it’s two and a half years since independence and six since the Chernobyl explosion. While Lucas hares after ever elusive leads, Rachel steers the pushchair over frozen cobbles to forage for essentials from unfamiliar shops. Isolated by her lack of knowledge of language or customs, and the apparent disapproval of the locals, she develops compulsive rituals and obsessions to keep her baby safe. Unfortunately, the tentative friendship she develops is with a racketeer’s trophy wife, while the suave gentleman who seemingly wants to help her is even more of a crook.
Judith Heneghan paints a compassionate portrait of a young woman gripped by anxieties in an alien land. If only her mother, back in England, weren’t so critical. If only her husband weren’t so ambitious for his career. The novel’s tension lies in whether Rachel is under or overestimating the danger, and whether the marriage will survive. The claustrophobia and exhaustion of new motherhood echoes the pathos of a country in recovery from a traumatic past. An absorbing read: thanks to Salt for my review copy.
For another novel set in Ukraine, see my review of A Boy in Winter.
They’ve arrived in Ukraine too late for the big news stories: it’s two and a half years since independence and six since the Chernobyl explosion. While Lucas hares after ever elusive leads, Rachel steers the pushchair over frozen cobbles to forage for essentials from unfamiliar shops. Isolated by her lack of knowledge of language or customs, and the apparent disapproval of the locals, she develops compulsive rituals and obsessions to keep her baby safe. Unfortunately, the tentative friendship she develops is with a racketeer’s trophy wife, while the suave gentleman who seemingly wants to help her is even more of a crook.
Judith Heneghan paints a compassionate portrait of a young woman gripped by anxieties in an alien land. If only her mother, back in England, weren’t so critical. If only her husband weren’t so ambitious for his career. The novel’s tension lies in whether Rachel is under or overestimating the danger, and whether the marriage will survive. The claustrophobia and exhaustion of new motherhood echoes the pathos of a country in recovery from a traumatic past. An absorbing read: thanks to Salt for my review copy.
For another novel set in Ukraine, see my review of A Boy in Winter.
 | Would therapy have helped sustain either of these marriages? Perhaps, although couple counselling is relatively rare in fiction, as I point out in my recent post for the Counsellors Café. But entertaining the possibility fixed one of my dilemmas: how could I compose a 99-word story about making a big splash? Click on the image for more about this prompt. |
Couple Counselling
Laying the printed sheet on the table, she smooths out the creases. “Sorry about your questionnaire.”
“Butterfingers splashed red wine on it,” he says.
Quite a splash. The pink colour-wash obscures half the words.
“He jogged my arm.”
“She hogged the remote.”
“My programme hadn’t finished.”
“She knew kick-off was at eight.”
“Who’d watch football on his wedding anniversary?”
“May I interrupt you a moment?”
They look up like naughty children. “Give us another,” he says. “I won’t let her mess it up again.”
“No need.” I toss the questionnaire in the bin. “We’ve plenty to work on already.”
Laying the printed sheet on the table, she smooths out the creases. “Sorry about your questionnaire.”
“Butterfingers splashed red wine on it,” he says.
Quite a splash. The pink colour-wash obscures half the words.
“He jogged my arm.”
“She hogged the remote.”
“My programme hadn’t finished.”
“She knew kick-off was at eight.”
“Who’d watch football on his wedding anniversary?”
“May I interrupt you a moment?”
They look up like naughty children. “Give us another,” he says. “I won’t let her mess it up again.”
“No need.” I toss the questionnaire in the bin. “We’ve plenty to work on already.”
| There’s a young marriage under strain in “Rebekah’s Foreskin”, one of the stories in my collection on the theme of identity, Becoming Someone. There are a few older marriages in trouble too, such as “Four Hail Marys”; you can watch me read the opening here: |  |
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