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A review by rbruehlman
The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India by Mansi Choksi
5.0
Truly haunting read.
The Newlyweds depicts the story of three couples who fall in love in violation of various Indian norms and pursue a relationship nonetheless. A Hindu woman besotted with a Muslim man; two women who become more than friends; a couple who have transgressed caste expectations. In each scenario, families are outraged, sometimes murderously, and the couples must flee to keep their forbidden romance alive.
The book is achingly written, immersing you in the pain and agony of these couples unlike almost any other nonfiction book I've read. Sometimes I wondered whether this book blends fact with fiction, because it reads like detailed prose. Nonetheless, it was a deeply enjoyable read, in an emotive way that more traditional staid journalism could never hope to emulate.
I have several good friends who grew up in India, and know a fair bit amount about the culture. Still, in reading the book, I realized how little I still know about India. The modern, liberal lives lived by my upper-class friends in Mumbai or Chennai are a world apart from the deeply conservative, rural societies depicted in The Newlyweds. It can be easy to forget that India's culture is one still maturing, where in certain areas women still have vanishingly few rights, and personal happiness is often an afterthought to the wants of the family and society at large. The indifference towards honor killings is stunning, and I felt overwhelming relief that I have so much autonomy and personhood compared to the women featured in this book... not that the oppressive social dynamics are much better for the men.
I really appreciated that the stories depicted in this book weren't happy. There wasn't really a happy ending for anyone. This isn't to say that the couples involved shouldn't have eloped, of course--it simply illustrates how bucking the norm is hard. I found the stories sometimes a bit hard to follow sometimes because it was three couples' stories interweaving with one another, but I suspect the book would have felt like a series of three long investigative journalism articles otherwise. The rise, crisis, and crescendo moments of each couple fell and rose in concert, which added a nice touch, even if it sometimes made it more difficult to follow.
The Newlyweds depicts the story of three couples who fall in love in violation of various Indian norms and pursue a relationship nonetheless. A Hindu woman besotted with a Muslim man; two women who become more than friends; a couple who have transgressed caste expectations. In each scenario, families are outraged, sometimes murderously, and the couples must flee to keep their forbidden romance alive.
The book is achingly written, immersing you in the pain and agony of these couples unlike almost any other nonfiction book I've read. Sometimes I wondered whether this book blends fact with fiction, because it reads like detailed prose. Nonetheless, it was a deeply enjoyable read, in an emotive way that more traditional staid journalism could never hope to emulate.
I have several good friends who grew up in India, and know a fair bit amount about the culture. Still, in reading the book, I realized how little I still know about India. The modern, liberal lives lived by my upper-class friends in Mumbai or Chennai are a world apart from the deeply conservative, rural societies depicted in The Newlyweds. It can be easy to forget that India's culture is one still maturing, where in certain areas women still have vanishingly few rights, and personal happiness is often an afterthought to the wants of the family and society at large. The indifference towards honor killings is stunning, and I felt overwhelming relief that I have so much autonomy and personhood compared to the women featured in this book... not that the oppressive social dynamics are much better for the men.
I really appreciated that the stories depicted in this book weren't happy. There wasn't really a happy ending for anyone. This isn't to say that the couples involved shouldn't have eloped, of course--it simply illustrates how bucking the norm is hard. I found the stories sometimes a bit hard to follow sometimes because it was three couples' stories interweaving with one another, but I suspect the book would have felt like a series of three long investigative journalism articles otherwise. The rise, crisis, and crescendo moments of each couple fell and rose in concert, which added a nice touch, even if it sometimes made it more difficult to follow.