The Newlyweds

August 6, 2012
In this cross-cultural, fish-out-of-water tale from Freudenberger, an 11-month courtship consisting of many emails and one exceptionally awkward visit culminates in marriage when 24-year-old Amina Mazid moves from her home in Bangladesh to New York to marry engineer George Stillman. But the coupleâs new life is anything but perfect. Both Amina and George are harboring secrets and will have to work to prevent the past from ruining the future. Narrator Mozhan Marno turns in a strong performance in this audio, deftly handling the books large cast of characters and switching between Bengali and American accents. Marno also creates a range of voices and speech patterns for the characters, capturing both Aminaâs fast-talking coworkers in Rochester and the formal diction of her parents. But most importantly, Marnoâs narration is grounded in Aminaâs voice and changes with the character as she finally begins to shed her meekness. A Knopf hardcover.

March 5, 2012
Freudenberger’s delicately observed second novel is another account of cross-cultural confusion in the tale of a Bangladeshi woman, 24-year-old Amina Mazid, who becomes the e-mail–order bride of 34-year-old George Stillman, an electrical engineer in Rochester, N.Y. Arriving in snowy Rochester in 2005 is a culture shock for Amina, but within three years she has her green card, is married to George, and is taking college courses when not pulling espresso at Starbucks. Her marriage, though, has its problems. Sex is awkward, George loses his job, and Amina discovers something that makes her doubt his sincerity. She eventually returns to Bangladesh to bring her parents to the U.S., but a problem with her father’s visa keeps Amina there and forces her back into the morass of her extended family’s resentments and petty jealousies, all of which she’d hoped to escape in marriage. Add to her troubles an old suitor, Nasir, waiting not so patiently in the wings. Freudenberger (The Dissident) does an excellent job of portraying the plight of a young Muslim woman not totally comfortable in either of the worlds she inhabits. But Amina’s passivity may frustrate many readers, and George is a complete cipher. In the end, Freudenberg’s anatomy of a modern arranged marriage is somewhat too dependent on cultural clichés to entirely satisfy. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.