Jill's Reviews > The Newlyweds

When I pick up a book entitled The Newlyweds, I expect it to be…well, about newlyweds: in this case, Amina Mazid, who moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York to marry a man she meets online – George Stillman.

And, since the cultures are so vastly different, I expect something else: a “ring” of authenticity, similar to the stories that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Jhumpa Lahiri explore so convincingly in their works. I expect a work that’s rich in character and brimming with the realities of a woman who leaves her native land at the height of the 9/11 terror and who strives to bridge her own cultural adherences and biases to her new husband and her new land.

Yet that isn’t quite what I got. I understand the theme of this novel, which is outlined here: “Was there a person who existed between languages? …She had thought that she’d been born with a soul whose thoughts were in a particular dialect, and she’d imagined that, when she married, her husband would be able to recognize this deep part of herself…In a way, George had created her American self, and so it made sense that it was the only one he would see.”

But as I read this book, though, I couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t George who created Amina’s American self…it was the author herself. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Amina was, at her core, American. I didn’t quite believe that a Muslim woman with little experience would quickly sleep with her fiancé, disregard her mother’s teachings, and not honor her parent’s wishes about an Islam wedding. I didn’t believe that George’s traditional family would so quickly embrace a “foreign” woman into their fold. But most of all, I didn’t believe in the relationship between Amina and George. Although explanations are given, it was hard to fathom how this 34-year-old man decided to marry – sight nearly unseen – a woman from another culture because she “didn’t play games.” George’s character is just never sufficiently fleshed out.

There are some big pluses about this book. The prose is confident and seamless; Ms. Freudenberger knows how to tell a story and to hold suspense. The story of how two virtual strangers hide a big part of themselves from the other is quite enticing. The quintessential journey homeward – when Amina must determine if there’s a distinction between the Bangladeshi Amina and the American one and confront her left-behind self – is nicely realized.

In one knowing sentence, Amina says to George, “At first we were puzzle pieces. Now we’re the puzzle.” Surrounded by somewhat stereotypical supporting players (her cousin who has a religious awakening, his free-living cousin who spurts anything on her mind and is a yoga instructor), both characters remain puzzle pieces because they never become two independent pieces of a whole. With Ms. Freudenberger’s obvious skill, that is, indeed, puzzling.