This is a really concise, sprawling family epic. The chapters are all short vignettes, and I mean really short, some are only a paragraph long, and none are over a few pages. And contained in these episodic jewels is Yalani, the American born daughter of two Sri Lankan immigrants, the first in their families to have a Love Marriage. When her uncle, a high-up in the Tamil Tigers is dying, he moves to Toronto with his daughter, who will have an Arranged Marriage. Yalani and her parents go to Toronto to care for him and it is there that Yalani starts researching her family, so we get the stories of all of her relatives in multiple generations. The narration jumps through time and sides and of the family, and much of it is also a girl trying to balance being American with being Sri Lankan and trying to make sense of the war.

Ganeshananthan's prose is amazing, though. I love the way she clues you into time and space, such as referring to her mother as "Vani not yet my mother" to signify the story takes place before she (Yalani) came on the scene. Her use of capitalization is also something that I savored. (This sounds pretentious, but it's not.)

Several small gems of chapters add up to make one lovely book.

see all my reviews: www.jenrothschild.com ( )

being asian, this book had a very asian undertone. the emotions are written so beautifully that sometime it hurts to read it. you feel pain with every word she uses. overall, i enjoyed it but i can't quite put my finger on what it is that makes me not completely like it. ( )

Love Marriage is a lyrical family history. The novel is told from the point of view of Yalini, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, who tells us that there are two types of marriage, Arranged Marriage and Love Marriage.

Yalini tries to assemble from a family history, tries to create a sense of order in the chaos of memory, sketching for herself a web of her cultural heritage that weaves through war, love, terrorism, culture, and tradition. Most of the stories center on the relationships of various women to the men they loved, or lost, or got but didn't want (though this may be because these are the ones that stood out most in my mind).

I enjoyed the poetry of this book and the stories told, the way each family has its own mythologies. And I was deeply interested in looking at a deeply rooted perspective on a country and a people I knew little about previously.

My one complaint would be that the title of chapters and sections did not always match up with the content within them. When a chapter is labeled "Vani", I expect that chapter to be in someway about Vani, not Vani's various family members (though they were all very interesting in their own rights). I suppose the message could be that we cannot full know one family member without knowledge of the rest, but the mild OCD in me expects chapters to be properly labeled. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. ( )

I have been reminded that I didn't post a review for this book. I thought I'd written one, but can't find it. It has been over a year since I read the book.

I remember that I enjoyed reading it. Ganeshananthan starts her story with the love marriage of the narrator's parents. Yalini talks about them and how they ended up in the US and about other family members elsewhere in the world, mainly Sri Lanka and Canada. She learns the reality of the turmoil in Sri Lanka and why some, her uncle in particular, have chosen to fight. I thought this would be a love story, but it is actually a book about choices. Some choices are made for us, such as traditional arranged marriages, and some we make ourselves. But the line between the two types of choices is not always that clear. There are many factors that lead us to make choices and sometimes not making one is a choice in itself.

Love Marriage is an interesting look at how Sri Lankan immigrants try to assimilate to life in the West. I learned a lot about the country and history of Sri Lanka and the war that the Tamil Tigers have been fighting. At times the book could be breathtaking with very vivid imagery but the majority of the time I felt it wasn't trying hard enough to hold my attention. Over all it was worth reading if the topic interests you. ( )

Love Marriage was well written...it showcases the struggles of immigrants and their constant battle to assimilate into Western life, and hold true to their customs. it is a great read

Beautiful, lyrical, not your typical blah love story, culture and politics, love, this book has got it all. Great first novel. I cant wait to read Ganeshananthan's next novel. ( )

Ambitious attempt at connecting personal and political narratives that never completely meshes, but is fully pleasurable along the way, and very quick, lyrical read. ( )

I received this book a long time ago as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and it took me forever to pick it up. The synopsis on the back didn't grab me, and I thought it would be a run of the mill "chick lit" type of book.

Instead what I found was a wonderful lyrical book about love, marriage, and family. It was also a study on how your past choices impact your present and future as well as those you love.

Surprisingly it was also an interesting lesson on Sri Lankan history. I wish I had read this book before Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. Together the two offer a fascinating profile of Sri Lanka. ( )

Love Marriage was a pleasant surprise - the cover and title made me believe it would be another cheesy, romantic portrayal of the sub-continent (we have saris and spices in Sri Lanka too!), but this family story set within the context of the Tamil Tiger movement and North American emigres was really enjoyable. I also liked the narrative style, it flowed beautifully and poetically, and really added to the whole experience for me. The only thing I felt cheated on was the narrator Yalini's story and character which was a bit sidelined. Still, overall a great read set in an area I don't read about often.

The author has very vividly described interesting points of a relationship against a backdrop of war and terror in Srlianka. Although the book is primarily sent in North America flashes of Srlianka and the eastern culture is very much present through out the novel.

An excellent work of fiction especially for a first timer and does bring to mind Arundathi Roy and Michael ondatje (Anil's ghost) ( )

Gentle and lyrical in its telling, this novel weaves together memorable family members from a culture unknown to this reviewer. Through this narrative, I came to understand their political conflicts and family dynamics a bit better. Ganeshananthan's style concentrates a lot of information into a relatively short chapter and I liked the movement from person to person as the story unfolded. ( )

I knew very little about Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and that particular history until I read this book. It inspired me to learn more about the topic. This book was different from most books by South Asian authors. It was well written, with a unique story that didn't end in the West saving someone from the East. It read like historical fiction but with so much emotion. A beautiful book, a joy to read. I'm looking forward to more books by her. ( ( )

"Love Marriage" is the first novel of promising young writer V.V. Ganeshananthan. What began as her Harvard senior thesis has blossomed into a multigenerational, multicultural tale of love, tradition, and family.

The fictional story unfolds through the eyes of Yalini, an American-born daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants. As Yalini reveals the secrets of her family’s past in Sri Lanka, including the story of her uncle, a former militant Tamil Tiger, readers witness her internal struggle between American modernity and the customs of her ancestors. The thread of differing types of marriages (arranged, love, self-arranged, outside, cousin, village, abroad, without consent, under pressure, proper and improper) unites the pieces of her relative’s stories that she can wheedle out of her close-lipped parents. For the rest, she must rely on her dying uncle, whose time is quickly coming to a close.

Reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri’s "The Namesake", Ganeshananthan’s "Love Marriage" has the capability to transcend American indifference, quietly sharing the background and history of a culture frequently identified as the enemy. The novel, well researched and magnificently crafted, will surely (and thankfully) not be the last we see from Ganeshananthan.

Many thanks to LibraryThing and Random House for providing me with an Advance Reader’s Edition of this book through the Early Reviewers program. See more of my book reviews on LibraryThing or my personal blog at http://www.libraryscenester.wordpress... ( )

"You don't marry a person, my father says to no one in particular. You marry a family." -- Love Marriage, p 4

Though Love Marriage begins with the expected story—a brief history of a young man from a South Asian background meeting and marrying outside of his culture's traditions—before the first 25 pages end it is clear that this novel is not simply about an "untraditional" combination of two lives. Instead, Love Marriage depicts the diverse ways in which tradition, culture, politics, experience and, above all, family, compete and combine with each other.

Beyond the exploration of a specific family history (which in many ways drives this novel), Love Marriage also delves deeply into two initially unexpected arenas: the political history of and ongoing conflict in Sri Lanka, and the familial conflict that comes with different beliefs about traditions and politics. The novel does so with a generally deft—though occasionally jarring—narrative that jumps between the contemporary first-person experiences of Yalini (the narrator/protagonist) and her retelling of her family members' histories in an omniscient voice.

In some ways, Love Marriage draws on the traditional structure of the bildungsroman, but Yalini's quest is not to a far-away land but rather through her own family history and political inheritance. And while she ultimately completes that quest, it is with an implicit recognition that the very history and traditions she has just navigated can no longer serve as a "roadmap" for her generation.

I thought that this was a remarkably good book, and very impressive for a first novel. I admit that in part, this is because I identified very strongly with aspects of the narrator's story and generally with the author's voice: she clearly captures the feeling of that time after one is admitted to the "adult world," living at least partially on one's own, yet ever-confronted by the traditions and extant expectations of the "real adults." As a more dramatic example, I thought her descriptions of the changed world following September 11, 2001, and the emotions of then-young adults and the confused lives that we inhabited were exceptionally well-portrayed. That this description happens early in the novel and becomes a piece of the novel's background—and not a focus—made it all the more powerful to me. She also does a remarkable job of balancing the real political strife that informs her writing with the demands of her fictional narrative: the politics get deep and heavy, but still manage to blend with and serve the plot.

Overall, this book has stuck with me, and in the time since I received it (just under 2 months), I've read it twice. I also think it has fairly broad appeal: my 83-year-old grandmother also read and enjoyed it. If you are so inclined, it can certainly inspire a stronger interest in international politics and/or Sri Lanka in particular (or reinforce a pre-existing interest, as the case may be).

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A marriage, the marriage between two people and two families can be seen differently by each person involved, and also for the viewers as well. A marriage means many things, to each of us it means something different. V.V. Ganeshananthan makes her point that marriage is the combination of two very diverse family trees, which will form a bond and belong to both host trees at the same time, while becoming a tree in itself as well.
In Love Marriage, we follow Yalini, a young woman born in the US to parents from Sri Lanka. Her roots, hidden throughout her life come to the surface and mean much more when her dying uncle comes to be with them as he passes. Yalini learns more about her family from him than her parents have ever spoken, but with what she hears she will then have to make the choice to love her uncle despite of his past, or to embrace him and his past. Filled with Sri Lankan politics and the waring Tamil Tigers and Sinhalese, seen from a distance as Yalini tries to make sense of the war her parents tried to have her not know.

Ganeshananthan does an excellent job with the politics, with the cultural aspects of it, and I followed it all (even though I did not know anything about the situation in Sri Lanka previous to reading this book!). The one thing that seemed stilted, or awkward was the writing style, but it was not so much so as to ruin the beautiful story that the author told. Her worlds crashed together and she was there to tell of what she saw, what she felt and all that led up to that point. An enjoyable read, informative and full of life...I'd read it all over again!

Quotes:
What is a marriage, a union of two people, or of them and their families as well? Ganeshanathan says that it is the second, a union of all involved, including each others families.
"Reverse a family tree, and branches of blood are whittled down to one person. I am composed of all the women and men who came before me. I am the result of many Marriages" (p. 239).

The power of this quote, and that it rings true over and over when waring peoples or nations have fought for generations. No one knows truly why the fight should go on, just that it does, and that it will, about the conflict she writes, "If you ask someone else, they will tell you a different story, say that the Tamils were making it all up, that there was no discrimination, that those cultures were equal before the Tigers began killing people, including their own. Ask another, and another. None of the stories will be absolutely complete, but their tellers will be absolutely certain. This is how we make war" (p. 119). ( )

This book explores the story of a family across time, geography, and culture. It is told from the perspective of the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, Yalini, who struggles with what it means to exist in two cultural worlds.

The book is full of historical information about the Tamil Tigers and the political history of Sri Lanka. Unfortunately this historical information is not balanced with enough narrative to make it truly compelling.

Because the stories of many different members of the family are told throughout the novel, it is hard to get attached to any character. Yalini's voice is drowned out as she relates historical events and tells the stories of relatives she's never even met.

For a work dealing with Sri Lankan history and culture, I much prefer "Anil's Ghost" by Michael Ondaatje. ( )

This book is not only poetically written, it is quite informative on the situation occurring with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. However, ultimately, as a novel, Love Marriage fails. Its vignette style is very difficult to follow in places, especially where the names and identities of the characters begin to blur together. The narrator, Yalini, is a rather flat excuse for a character, and the fact that she exists at all confuses me, as the style seems more first person omniscient than anything else in most places. There are many loose threads left untied in the tale, especially those related to Yalini herself (i.e. what happened to the boy?!). I found this book rather disappointing, and hope that the author's next effort is better put together and polished.

Love Marriage is a good first novel. Ganeshananthan successfully explores Sri Lankan history within the context of one family's story without alienating non-Sri Lankans. I enjoyed the cultural self-discovery of the protagonist as she learns about her family's history and cultural heritage. Throughout the novel the author takes the opportunity to educate Western readers about Sri Lanka without condescending to the West's ignorance. It was an interesting story and an easy read. ( )

Love Marriage simultaneously tells the story of a Sri Lankan family while providing moving insight into the political and social realities that dominate the Sri Lankan diaspora. Political history and loyalties cannot be separated from family history and personal belief. The pressures brought to bear by conflicts large and small yield surprising results in this beautifully written, affecting book. The language is often direct and unadorned, yet almost always remarkably poetic. I recommend it without reservation. ( )

Told from a young Sri Lankan-American woman's point of view, this book is about the things we do to and for our families, and how those choices can affect people generations later. It is, essentially, a book about family history, and how the narrator struggles to find out where she fits into it.
I found it interesting to, while not necessarily agreeing with their tactics, sympathize and understand where both sides of the issues in Sri Lanka were coming from (the government and the Tamil Tigers). Though she seemed more sympathetic to the Tigers, I think the author did well not to romanticize the Tigers' role in the conflicts, therefore allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.
Though at times difficult to recall who is who, I quite enjoyed reading this book. I also now understand a lot more about what is and has been happening in Sri Lanaka that doesn't make the nightly news. ( )

When Murali, a Sri Lankan Tamil practicing medicine in the U.S., met Vani, a girl who had grown up in a village near his and had fled to the states in search of her life, they decided to marry. By Tamil tradition, their marriage was a Love Marriage, frowned on in a Hindu society that relied on adherence to traditions.
"In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage," says Yalini, their American-born daughter and the narrator of this delightful first novel.
A Love Marriage is by definition an Improper Marriage. In Sri Lanka, Vani's brother Kumaran was a leader of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group fighting for independence from the country's ruling Sinhalese majority. When he heard of the couple's marriage plans, he raged against Murali's family and threatened to kill them. Now, almost 30 years later, Kumaran is dying and he turns to Murali for help. He travels with his daughter Jenani to Canada, where Murali and Vani rent a house on the outskirts of Toronto's Sri Lankan community to care for him until the end comes.
Yalini, who complained earlier that "no matter how American I was, I was also the only Sri Lankan" in school, is forced to realize that, in the words of her cousin, "I can already see that you do not know anything about" Sri Lanka. She encounters the reality of Tamil life through the stories of her uncle, through the uncovering of her family's history, and her interactions with the Tamil community in Toronto.
First-time author V.V. Ganeshananthan has crafted an absorbing tale that carries the reader through the plot twists -- present and past -- effortlessly. Her writing style consists of short bursts of exposition; some sections are only a few lines long. Yet, at the end of the narrative, the reader feels a new sense of familiarity with a strange, far-off land and the people, who in spite of their roots, are not much different from the rest of us. ( )

Having had basically no prior knowledge of Sri Lankan history, this was an interesting read as far as learning about the political environment and various cultural aspects of the country. The author has a beautiful, sort of dreamy, writing style, but sometimes it seemed like she was distracted from the story she was telling. I think this made the book less engrossing than it could have been.

An enjoyable read for those of us who like learning about different cultures through fiction. I'd definitely read more books by this author. ( )

The short passages of this fantastic novel make Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan a very quick and enjoyable read. The author writes with wisdom seemingly beyond her 25 years. The beauty of her verse captured me and compelled me to become enchanted with her characters. This is not a book that every type of person will enjoy. The dreamy style of writing, along with the short passages, make for an almost journal-style feel. However, if you enjoy reading about family, war, culture-crossing, or biographies, this book is for you.

Side note - the family tree at the beginning of the book helped IMMENSELY. I would suggest that any new reader make a copy of it and keep it nearby while reading, just do you don't have to constantly flip back and forth. I lost my place in the book more than once because I needed a double check of who-was-who! ( )

This is a book which I desperately wanted to like. Ganeshananthan has a way with words which is absolutely amazing for somebody who is only 25. My book is highlighted all over with the beauty which she finds. However, the stories were highly disconnected. They felt like a bunch of random stories about random people instead of a cohesive narrative. This novel really lacked anything which tied it together. ( )