Sure, you could be spending these pre-summer days doing outdoor activities — but wouldn’t you rather be reading? For those whose answer to that question is an enthusiastic “yes,” here are four new books worth staying indoors for.
“Love Marriage: A Novel” by Monica Ali (Scribner, $27.99)
This is one of those enchanting books full of people making bad decisions, but you find yourself rooting for them regardless. Ali, previously a Booker Prize finalist for “Brick Lane,” introduces us to two small families: the Ghoramis, consisting of India-born parents Shaokat and Anisah and their grown children Yasmin and Arif; and the Sangsters, British national and single mother Harriet and her grown son Joe.
Yasmin and Joe are doctors (as is Shaokat), engaged to be married as the book begins, but Yasmin worries about how her traditional parents will react to Harriet, a well-known and outspoken feminist writer. She’s wise to have worried, as the months before the wedding are filled with pronouncements, misunderstandings, sexual missteps and a gradual examination, by all of the characters, of love and passion.
Ali creates a rich world of contemporary London, with even minor characters beautifully and quirkily fleshed out (I loved Arif’s girlfriend’s grandmother La-La, “which was her stage name from when she was a dancer with a troupe called Legs & Co. that appeared on ‘Top of the Pops’”). And the author makes the interesting choice to keep Harriet, the book’s most larger-than-life character, mostly on the sidelines; Ali knows that sometimes a bright color is most vivid when used sparingly.