I enjoyed this look at life from the perspective of a British sikh family'; the dual timelines were well plotted and added to the overall storyline's progress. Some of the characters could have been fleshed out more, but I enjoyed reading about Surinder and Kamaljit and the various pulls and pressures of being a first-generation immigrant family.
Thanks for the chance to read the ARC.

Amazing read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

Beautiful. Poignant. Phenomenal.
This was a beautiful read and I learnt so much. I cried and I smiled and there was nothing more that I wanted from this book. Truly a gem.

I found this a slightly mixed bag. There were times when I felt there was too much peripheral information - it felt almost as if it was non-fiction in places. I found it slow-going for quite a while too - but that said I am glad I persisted because around halfway through I got much more invested in the characters and found it a much easier read from thereon in. I did like the insight into life of a corner shop proprietor.

When Arjan returns to the Black Country after his father's death, his family's corner shop represents everything he tried to leave behind. But his mother insists on keeping the business open, and Arjun finds himself being dragged back from London, and forced into big decisions about his own relationship. Yet Arjan's story isn't the first and it won't be the last: Surinder and Kamaljit, two sisters, a generation back in the family, also experienced their own share of betrayals and loyalties, loves and regrets. Exquisitely written!! I loved this book!

Thank you @netgalley &
@randomhouse for the E-arc. The opinions are my own.
🅜🅨 🅣🅗🅞🅤🅖🅗🅣🅢:
ʜɪᴛs: The plot is told in alternating timelines, starting from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. The book gave insight into the British Sikh culture which I enjoyed and having lived in the East Midlands, I was intrigued about life as a South Asian in 60s/70s Britain. My parents in law lived in the West Midlands in the 70s and it was interesting to read about the corner shop culture they used to speak about. I could sympathise with Arjan for feeling torn between his duty as a son and his desire to have an interracial marriage. The immigrant history is always eye opening to read.

ᴍɪssᴇs: The book was hard to get into initially but my curiosity kept me going, even though the plot was predictable. The only developed characters were Surinder and Kamaljit, while the rest weren't well drawn. The book relied heavily on political/racial references and it felt like reading an essay rather than a work of fiction. As described by the author, this book is explicitly based on Arnold Bennett's Old Wives's Tale , with a contemporary British Asian twist but not an original story. However, there was so much potential with the characters, some fell flat and ending felt like there was unfinished business.
🌟🌟🌟

Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera, first published in 2013, is a reworking of Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. The protagonists of Bennett’s 1908 novel are two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines. In their youth, the siblings work in their mother’s drapery shop, but then Sophia elopes with a travelling salesman, while Constance marries Mr Povey who works in her mother’s shop. The two are reunited in old age.

Sanghera essentially borrows the general drift of the story, along with some of the more granular plot details, and refashions them as the gently comic saga of a British-Asian family running a corner shop in the West Midlands, with the Baines sisters replaced by Surinder and Kamaljit, daughters of an immigrant Sikh family. The novel alternates between the present (early 2010s), as represented and recounted in the first person by Arjan, the prodigal son of the owners of “Baines Stores”, and the “historical” account of Surinder and Kamaljits coming of age. The stories intertwine at the end.

The contemporary segments of the novel are presented in the knowing, comedic voice of Arjan, a character who would not have been out of place in a Nick Hornby novel. The funny, self-parodic narration elicits smiles and chuckles, but the book also has more earnest undercurrents about the challenges of the immigrant experience in the UK. This element comes to the fore in the segments about Surinder and Kamaljit, and their respective histories.

Ultimately, Marriage Material is a feel-good novel, in which Sanghera even manages to slip in some elements of the mystery and thriller genre before cruising towards an optimistic ending. Overall, an entertaining but thoughtful read by the author of Empireland.

3.5*

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/04/marriage-material-by-sathnam-sanghera.html

This was such a good read, well written with a compelling storyline and well developed characters that I found really relatable and I really empathised with. I couldn't put this book down, I really enjoyed it.