“This inventive retelling of Pride and Prejudice charms.”—People “A fun, page-turning romp and a thought-provoking look at the class-obsessed strata of Pakistani society.”—NPRAlys Binat has sworn never to marry—until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable … Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more.
When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful—and single—entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal—and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance.
Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood.
Praise for Unmarriageable
“Delightful . . . Unmarriageable introduces readers to a rich Muslim culture. . . . [Kamal] observes family dramas with a satiric eye and treats readers to sparkling descriptions of a days-long wedding ceremony, with its high-fashion pageantry and higher social stakes.”—Star Tribune
“Thoroughly charming.”—New York Post
“[A] funny, sometimes romantic, often thought-provoking glimpse into Pakistani culture, one which adroitly illustrates the double standards women face when navigating sex, love, and marriage. This is a must-read for devout Austenites.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
more
Unmarriageable is a retelling of Jane Austen’s famed Pride and Prejudice, only this time it’s set in Pakistan during the years 2000 and 2001. The classic plot line is followed meticulously and each familiar character is effortless to identify. But the best thing about this retelling is the author’s dedication to honoring Jane Austen’s independent spirit and her demand for more than what society dictated for her.
Author Soniah Kamal’s use of the Pakistan culture appears to marry well with the themes of the original novel as the pressure on women to meet milestones within pre-determined time frames remains strong based on my limited research. However, Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett has met her counterpart in Kamal’s Alys Binat, and being a teacher to impressionable schoolgirls allows her to guide and empower future generations to dream beyond the norm. Jane Austen would be so proud!
Admittedly, when I saw this book I felt the list of the many recent Pride and Prejudice retellings is growing tiresome, but I am genuinely glad I moved forward with this title. Unmarriageable offers strong messages related to gender inequality, severe double standards, and choice. It’s rich in culture and family, both which interestingly serve as positive and negative influences throughout the story as our heroine continually finds her independence challenged. But we all know how this story ends. Some say love wins. I (along with others) say the heroine wins. She wins the freedom to choose her future, and I always have time for that. Check it out.
Unmarriageable is a joyride featuring all the beloved Austen characters with a Pakistani twist, drawing on universal themes of love, passion, and the healing nature of tea. I read it in one gulp!
Just finished this and really liked it. Reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel, the story centers on the five daughters of the Binat household in Pakistan. Their father, once a wealthy man, has lost his fortune to his crooked brother and sister-in-law, and the family is forced to move to a less fashionable area and make do with substantially less money to live on. The two oldest daughters, Alys and Jena, teach English at the local private school, as a way of bringing in more cash. The mother, Mrs. Binat, is very concerned about her daughters making good marriages. She is very dramatic, traditional and scheming in her attempts to help things along. A very entertaining and interesting read. Highly recommend.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for a review copy. This is my honest opinion.
3.5 STARS!
Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s classic story, Pride & Prejudice.
I loved the cultural aspect. It was very traditional. We have these strong women from Pakistan who want an education and to be empowered and not worry about finding a husband.
Alysba Binat and Valentine Darsee were opposites. They have this fierce hate-love relationship. It was great seeing them bicker back and forth. And I especially loved reading and learning about the Binat family. They were funny, at moments rather crude, and misunderstood.
I love how the author connected the original points from Pride & Prejudice to this modern rendition. Above all I loved getting to learn about the culture and traditions of Pakistan. The food sounded divine! Though the writing was strong, I did find the itself dragged a bit with all the detail. Also, I would have loved more encounters and angsty moments between Alys and Darsee.
Overall, I recommend this novel to lovers of P&P and anyone who loves good cultural literature. This story was truly charming and enthralling.
This is exactly what it promises on the tin — a straight-up retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in modern day Pakistan. The plot follows the same arc and its fun to see how iconic moments are reshaped to fit the culture. Oddly, what I most enjoyed are the chapters where it deviates from the original plot. This might be because those were the ones where I was surprised. I particularly liked when the Anne de Burgh substitute breaks from her archetype and speaks. In the novel, her disability renders her voiceless and here she is consciously not.
Soniah Kamal’s retelling of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice (P and P) was an entertaining read. Pakistan and Austen’s world share many of the same constraints on women–especially an emphasis on marrying well over for love and a total unacceptance of premarital sex.
In Unmarriageable, Elizabeth and Jane become Alys and Jena Binat, schoolteachers who have intelligence and beauty yet are spinsters in their early thirties. Jena is shy and sweet; Alys is an ardent feminist who pushes her students to think for themselves.
The younger sisters include the Muslim fundamentalist Mari, the precocious boy-crazy and fashion-obsessed Lady, and the unhappily overweight Qitty. The family is not of the best kind, for Mr. Binat was bilked out of his inheritance which brought downsizing in house and budget, and Mrs. Binat’s grandmother is rumored to have been a prostitute.
Aly’s friend Sherry is forty-one but still has hopes of ‘grabbing’ a husband and finally experiencing a sexual encounter with a man. Every evening Alys and Sherry meet in the local cemetery, and under the pretense of feeding the birds, enjoy a cigarette and a heart-to-heart talk.
Alys and Jena meet the well-to-do Bungles and Darsee at a wedding celebration. Bungles is obviously taken by Jena. But she won’t make ‘you-you’ eyes at him for fear of being considered a slut. Alys and Darsee, of course, stumble through a series of misunderstandings and dislike.
Just reading about Pakistani wedding traditions is interesting. And the fashions! The food! Oh, how my mouth watered over eggplant in tomatoes, ginger chicken, seekh kabobs, naan, korma, and rose-flavored cake with a cup of chai.
The novel is not a rewriting of Austen’s classic but does follow the plot line. We know what is going to happen. But I completely enjoyed this novel for on its own merits.
Kamal channels some of Austen’s irony.
When Jena twists her ankle, Bungles carries her to the car and rushes to the clinic. Kamal writes, “The clinic was an excellent facility, as all facilities that carer to excellent people tend to be, because excellent people demand excellence, unlike those who are grateful for what they receive.”
There is a lot of talk about literature. Book titles are dropped throughout many conversations. The characters often speak about Austen in an ironic twist.
Annie Benna dey Bagh comments that she found P and P “helpful in an unexpected way…I decided that, no matter how ill I got, I’d never turn or be turned into Anne de Bourgh.”
“Thankfully, we don’t live in a novel,” Alys comments. And yet Sherry channels Charlotte Lucas in marrying for financial security although she does have the choice to be self-supporting.
Darsee and Alys agree on many points in these conversations about literature and Pakistan’s colonial heritage.
“I believe, Alys said to Darsee, “A book and an author can belong to more than one country or culture. English came with the colonizers, but its literature is part of our heritage took as in pre-partition writing.”
When Wickaam comes on the scene, English Literature teacher Alys is appalled by his preference that films are better than books. He is drop-dead gorgeous and spins his lies to cover his unsavory history.
Kamal includes loads of nods to Austen. Minor characters are named Thomas Fowle and Harris Bigg-Wither, real people in Jane’s life.
Alys often parodies the famous opening line of P and P, such as “it was a truth universally acknowledged that people enter our lives in order to recommend reads.”
Thankfully, a Goodreads win brought this book into my life!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there can never be too many adaptions of Pride and Prejudice. I loved this reimagining of Austen’s most famous work and thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of my favourite character’s transposed into modern Pakistan. I was surprised by how seamless the transition was, proving the author’s point about the universality of certain stories and characters. A must read for Austen fans.
The beauty of Unmarriageable is that every character is at once familiar and yet wonderfully brand new in their Pakistani garb. It’s like bumping into long-lost friends at a party and sitting down to catch up, marveling at all the changes the years have wrought and yet delighting in their familiarity.
Irreverent, witty, and imaginative . . . Austen herself would have enjoyed Kamal’s deft retelling of her novel, while sipping a cup of chai.
Best reworking of Pride and Prejudice of the many I’ve read
Quick read, funny, good book to escape from Coronia Viris for a few hours.
Soniah Kamal second novel, Unmarriageable, a retelling of the Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set in modern Pakistan is a stunning achievement. Kamal manages to capture biting social criticism in a witty and warm package with the loveliest language and a deft touch. Bravo on this novel – it has won great accolades – deservedly so.
f you’ve asked if the world really needs another Pride & Prejudice retelling, the answer is probably no, but then you probably haven’t read Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable. This whip-smart retelling takes place in Pakistan in 2000. Colorful, biting, and bubbly, I am loving this version to pieces.
I kept trying to like this more than I did. I enjoyed learning something of Pakistani culture, about which I know nothing. I enjoyed that the author had recognized that Pakistani culture in the year 2000, especially as it related to marriage and women, was so similar to Jane Austen’s time, a world and two centuries away. I love Pride and Prejudice so that may have affected the way I felt about this novel, it suffered by comparison to the original. In fact, part of the problem may be that the story line hewed so closely to the original, without any new understanding. I found the dialogue often silly and contrived and the writing very pedestrian, unlike Austen’s prose which is witty and well-crafted. I didn’t like the characters in the same way that I loved Jane Austen’s P&P characters. They, too, often seemed silly and contrived without the nuance of the original. For example, every single character had a nickname. Often they used rhyming slang which I thought was rather silly. There were long lists of every food served at a meal and I found it singularly unhelpful since I knew nothing of what any of it might be. In fact, while I appreciated that possibly the inclusion of so much Urdu was to give the book a cultural grounding, I found it off-putting since every time the Urdu had to be translated, of course. It wasn’t helpful to my understanding to have it written in Urdu to start with. I finished the book and wasn’t tempted to abandon it, an outcome which is better than I sometimes achieve, so I gave the book two rather than one star. Also, there is no getting around the fact that the P&P story is a good one, one that keeps you turning pages into the night. That wasn’t completely lost in this version–but it was a near thing.
Fun read
It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged That I Love and Pride and Prejudice Retelling!
.
.
Unmarriageable is an wonderful retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan in 2001. All of the key players and events of P&P are here but with the rich culture and history of Pakistan woven in beautifully.
.
.
One of the things I loved most about Unmarriageable was that we got more than just Alys’s take on things. The reader spends at least a few moments in everyone’s perspective including Darsee, which was absolutely swoon worthy and made those proposals even better!
.
.
I also throughly enjoyed how close she stayed the the original story but added in modern circumstances and technology while brining Pakistan to life. I fully admit that my knowledge of Pakistani history was rudimentary at best and after Unmarriageable I’m inspired to learn more.
.
.
Anyone who loves P&P will surely fall in love with this amazing diverse and own voices rendition.
LOVED this re-telling of Pride and Prejudice set in the Pakistani marriage market. Each member of the Binat family was finely sketched out (à la Jane) and Kamal’s writing truly made me feel like an insider in Pakistani life (and I have never been to Pakistan, although I have been to India & Nepal). She is a truly gifted writer. This story is light, funny, well-developed, and emotionally resonant. I highly recommend this book for all readers of great books as well as Jane Austen and contemporary romance. Fabulous.
Seldom, very seldom, does a book resonate with me so personally that the story lingers, follows me for days. I have been thinking about “Unmarriageable” for a few days now and believe it to be a formidable “Pride and Prejudice” reimagining in the cornucopia that is present day Jane Austen fan fiction. New Austen-inspired stories are published hourly with the advent of self-publishing and so I am always a tad jaded in wondering what is there new that a writer brings to the table, what fresh angle can someone add to Austen’s masterpiece. I am ever amazed how well Austen translates to other cultures and times. I enjoyed recognizing favorite characters in this Austen-inspired “Pride & Prejudice” set in Pakistan. The themes do not vary much from the original, following a predictable formula; the surprises are in how well everything fits, even in these contemporary times. Nothing was lost in translation from Regency to more modern times. Fascinating reimagining!
Kamal hits all the right notes with humor and smart dialog. They say write what you know, and Kamal does just that! Her storytelling of an old favorite is colorful, edgy, and bright; Kamal deftly pens a familiar story so that those new to Austen or “Pride and Prejudice” will enjoy while even the most staunch Austenite will be drawn to the obvious and not-so-obvious nuance!
Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
Have you read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen? This is a delightful, modern Pakistani version which will endlessly entertain you.
Pinkie Barkat, the mother of five daughters, is out to fulfill her maternal quest of seeing all her girls married. Every man they meet is a potential husband, is he not?
The characters and dialog are spot on to keep you smiling as you you read this humorous tale which offers great insight to the culture, foods and customs of Pakistan. Soniah Jamal puts just the right spin on this story.
As in all great reads, conflicts are resolved, and undesirable characters get their due. Be sure to read the Epilogue for a huge surprise from sister Qitty.
Five stars from this reviewer for Unmarriageable!
I loved this retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Pakistani style. Trying to marry off her five daughters had made Mrs. Binat difficult to be around. When the family is invited to the wedding of the year Mrs. Binat seizes her chance. Witty and entertaining.