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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Young marriages under strain: Asghar and Zahra & Snegurochka

10/6/2019

8 Comments

 
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.


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.


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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.”


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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Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
D. Avery link
11/6/2019 02:28:08 am

Yep, that questionnaire isn't so necessary, is it? A fine fun flash.
My mother, decades ago, subscribed to one of those women's magazines, Good Housekeeping or some such. They had a regular feature, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" Seems both the books you review above support the idea that supports are helpful; family, friends, community... oft times the successful couples have a village.

Reply
Anne
11/6/2019 03:16:34 pm

I think most of those questionnaires are best used to start a conversation, although perhaps not usually as dramatically as this.
I wonder how you’d diagnose whether a marriage can be saved as so much is about how far participants are willing to compromise, forgive, and work towards change.

Reply
Norah Colvin
11/6/2019 12:44:51 pm

Ha! Your splash is also a spill, but you've made yours a little more obvious than I did. Such great characterisation - one of your traits, as is clearly demonstrated in the other stories which you also mention.
Both books you reviewed sound interesting. Now I just need to write myself some more time. :)

Reply
Anne
11/6/2019 03:12:36 pm

Thanks, Norah, so given we’d had a similar interpretation of the prompt as she cottoned onto yours sooner. But it also shows our different focus: I’m automatically thinking therapies, your mind’s on child development.

Reply
Norah Colvin
15/6/2019 12:00:42 pm

I think the therapies you mention may hark back to child development. :)

Anne Goodwin
15/6/2019 01:34:50 pm

Ha, yes indeed, they're strongly connected.

Charli Mills
13/6/2019 03:23:21 am

The cover of Snegurochka is unusual, looking more like a non-fiction travel book. But it sounds like a profound book, a new mother in a recovering land. Your flash makes good use of dialog. I noticed the break in dialog was to offer an observation from the therapist which allows her (as a character) to further the story without breaking rules. See -- I'm learning to look for how fictional therapists can work in fiction!

Reply
Anne Goodwin
14/6/2019 12:03:38 pm

The cover looks somehow Eastern European/stark Communist to me and it isn’t very appealing. Neither is the title, which translates as the snow child, from the fairytale. But I’m glad you picked up that it’s a worthwhile read as I wasn’t very pleased with my review.
Yay, we’re getting to grips with fictional therapists together. Here she is doing exactly what a real therapist should do in moving the story on.

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