At last, and finally: literary sex is back. The Bad Sex Prize has a lot to answer for in British publishing, scaring writers off describing sex in case it gets read out in a sarcastic voice at the In and Out club. (The deathlessly repetitive efforts of E.L. James didn’t do much for British sex writing either, good as they were for the GDP.) I’m not sure Monica Ali would have been the first name to spring to mind if you were to imagine the rebirth of the literary sexy novel, but here we are, and Love Marriage is absolutely terrific.
It opens with Yasmin Ghorami, obedient daughter and junior doctor, discussing with her brother Arif the pubic hair of her future mother-in-law, and it pretty much rollocks off from there. It’s not just about sex of course. This is a big, baggy, generous novel, and every one of its many characters, no matter how small their part, is beautifully rounded out.
It is the story of three families. The Ghoramis have worked their way up from nothing for the father to become a successful, hardworking GP, who expects a lot from his children — Yasmin, the obedient junior doctor daughter, and Arif, the underachieving disappointment. The Sangsters are an entitled, upper-middle-class mother and son, living in Primrose Hill — Harriet, a well-known feminist, and Joe, who is Yasmin’s fiancé. And then there is Lucy, the working-class girl Arif has impregnated and is too scared to tell his father about.
But it is Yasmin’s sexual awakening at the hands of a calm, ‘remotely benevolent’ colleague that jolts the story into motion, and moves it beyond comic set pieces.
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