Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

My Review - 4 Stars

Unmarriageable is an inventive Pride & Prejudice retelling set in Pakistan. The patriarchal nature of Pakistani culture paired well for modernizing Austen’s story. It’s an update, to be sure, but the Binat girls face many of the same constraints as the Bennets.

My heart really went out to Alys and the way she tried to rise above those constraints, believing she does not need to get married and focusing more on her career. Indeed, the antics her mother and best friend engage in serve to only underscore her point. While society may not know what to do with an unmarried woman, Alys is right that a bad marriage, particularly in a patriarchal society, can be a cage stifling the woman in it. But of course the delight of any P&P retelling is seeing her fall for the exception to her rule. Alys and Darsee are antagonistic and complex and I loved watching them learn more about each other, as they realize how wrong their first impressions were.

There were some fun meta moments, like when Alys declared she’d never want to marry someone like Darcy the way Elizabeth did or Annie saying she never wanted to be sickly and voiceless like Anne de Bourgh. It’s a book-lovers story riddled with literary references to great effect. I particularly enjoyed Darsee and Alys's book discussions and the moment he gave her a copy of his favorite Pakistani novel Sunlight On A Broken Column, which I now want to read. I loved getting to see more of Pakistani culture, especially the food and wedding rituals. Plus, Soniah Kamal’s social commentary on feminism, classism, and colonialism made for a truly engaging read.

If I have one small complaint, it's the amount of fat-shaming throughout the story. Qitty is brow-beaten, especially by Lady and Mrs. Binat, for her weight. Yes, it says something about their characters, and yes, at the end she thankfully gets her due with a body positive image but as a white American woman reading it, I cringed on Qitty's behalf every time. I suspect this may be part of Pakistani culture: just as everyone comments on each other's marital status, they comment on weight and looks as well.

P&P isn’t my favorite of Austen’s work and so whenever Unmarriageable adhered closely to my least favorite parts of the original—every Bennet/Binat gets on my last nerve, and that can include Elizabeth/Alys—I struggled. I've always been more sympathetic to Darcy/Darsee regarding how awful the Bennets can be. However, there’s a reason Austen's work has endured and I’m grateful it’s led to stories like this. I'll be curious to see what Pakistani reviewers make of it.

CW: fat-shaming, slut-shaming, colonialism, classism, characters making references to killing themselves for the sake of drama, character states Alys is lucky he's not the sort of man who would throw acid on her

Synopsis

In this one-of-a-kind retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys 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 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.

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Disclosure: I received an advanced copy from Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links included in this post.