Love Marriage

Love Marriage is an exemplary text for our diverse and forward thinking times.

A tribute to freedom and self-exploration, Ali's novel is, above all, a story about love - the bonds that it brings and it's shackles.

Ali has written an engaging family drama, with some frank and refreshing sex scenes. Despite being set some years before the pandemic, Love Marriage brings home the dedication, sacrifice and flawed humanity of NHS workers as never before.

Love Marriage is enormously satisfying in its inventions and observations, and its exploration of cultural diversity in Britain. At once touching and satirical, it’s a great return to form: as engrossing and enjoyable as Brick Lane itself.

You’re going to love this sly, funny, saucy, thoughtful novel.

Ali balances devilish satire with tenderness, as characters reach for self-knowledge while grappling with sexual repression and awakening, British Muslim identity and discrimination, and family and freedom.

Celebrating the collision of cultures and the idiosyncrasies of relationships, this engrossing read is humorous and humane.

A funny and tender saga, in which every character is properly expanded, revelation follows revelation and the reader prays that love will conquer all. Wonderfully satisfying.

A book tipped for awards success and a moving story of second chances.

Over 500 compulsive, tightly plotted pages, [Love Marriage] explores the conflict between duty and desire, family and freedom.

Ali’s superpower is navigating complex family relationships and this is a saga that is at its most absorbing when we’re waist-deep in domestic discord,
although Ali also provides an acute examination of race, class and identity in British society. But that is just one
thread in this glorious tapestry of modern British family life.

Love Marriage is Monica Ali’s gloriously entertaining tragicomedy of everyday London life. 

Fans of Monica Ali will lap up her frank, rollicking new epic... it is the work of a mature feminist author. 

‘I have loved every one of Monica Ali’s books and Love Marriage is her best. A huge, bounteous story, it is lit from end to end with human variety and storytelling brilliance. Ali writes like an angel who is not afraid of the devil. It will be a novel of the year and confirms Monica Ali as a national treasure.’

Love Marriage is a story about who we are and how we love in today’s Britain – with all the complications and
contradictions of life, desire, marriage and family. What starts as a captivating social comedy develops into a
heart-breaking and gripping story of two cultures, two families and two people trying to understand one
another.

It’s an utter joy to read, funny, compassionate and very moving.

A truly astonishing piece of writing - exquisite storytelling, featuring the most human portrayal of doctors I’ve ever read. I defy you to book this book down.

I have loved every one of Monica Ali’s books and LOVE MARRIAGE is her best. A huge, bounteous story, it is lit from end to end with human variety and storytelling brilliance. Ali writes like an angel who is not afraid of the devil. It will be a novel of the year and confirms Monica Ali as a national treasure.

This is such a gloriously vibrant and tender novel packed with wit, intelligence and wisdom. It has everything - clashing cultures, family rifts, suppressed addictions, desire, passion. Her two junior doctor protagonists are superbly drawn - flawed, courageous, flailing, human. Just brilliant.

I loved Love Marriage, and looked forward to reading it every night. Funny, compassionate, sexy, romantic, beautifully plotted and richly peopled, it is both highly original and working within a literary tradition of novels about love and marriage.

I tore through Love Marriage. [...] Monica totally nailed that semi-permanent full body-cringe of parent-child awkwardness that never quite leaves you, however how old you are.

I absolutely loved it. Exquisitely written with big heartedness, intelligence and passion.

LOVE MARRIAGE has a warm intelligence and a sharp observational power, making the characters and the world of the story feel very alive.

I absolutely loved LOVE MARRIAGE. [...] It’s big-hearted and tender and it’s a novel that cares about its characters so deeply that you will too.

A novel with the richness, and the throng and press and hum of life itself, LOVE MARRIAGE is bold, compassionate, big-hearted, pitch-perfectly written, and utterly unputdownable. Every single character lives and breathes on the page, even unnamed walk-on ones who appear for three lines. Make time for all of them for they are going to take up residence in your mind and soul for a long, long time.

Warm, affectionate and hilarious … A joyous novelist at the peak of her formidable powers. 

No one captures the modern family like Monica Ali - Love Marriage is a masterful cacophony of characters, all drawn with deep empathy and sharp insight. The novel is full of surprises and unexpected twists, with an ending that will take your breath away.