Starting brutally with a refugee's experience of crossing into Europe this has a very powerful scene that comes along beside you and hits hard across your consciousness as you read, and then backtrack and make sure that you read that right. You did.
Following arrival in Europe the refugee has to somehow remain and the way to do that is to get married to someone with a passport. This is not achieved by going to a local nightclub and being suitably sultry and handsome and therefore an irresistible proposition for the local population. Here the marriage is loosely "arranged".
The novel then tells the stories of both the husband and wife, crossing borders on occasion, as they move away from each other and take entirely different life paths. One becoming a registrar and the other a part time cycle shop assistant.
This is not a heavy book to read, nor is it chick lit. It tells the effect of the marriage on both parties, and the importance attached to it by them. Overall it's an enjoyable afternoon or two of reading and a good debut. If the author thinks as diversely as this each time she writes we will be in for a treat.
The decider- would I buy another book by this author? Yes
If you would like to read it next tweet me @nneerraakk and it's yours!
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