The Newlyweds

"A big, complicated portrait of marriage, culture, family, and love. . . . Every minute I was away from this book I was longing to be back in the world she created." --Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder

"Riveting. [The Newlyweds] succeeds based on Freudenberger's uncanny ability to feel her way inside Amina's skin." --Los Angeles Times

"A delight, one of the easiest book recommendations of the year. . . . The cross-cultural tensions and romance so well drawn here recall the pleasures of Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. . . . The Newlyweds offers a reading experience redolent of Janeite charms: gentle touches of social satire, subtly drawn characters and dialogue that expresses far more than its polite surface. . . . On either side of the world, making a marriage work demands casting off not just old lovers, but cherished fantasies about who we are. Whether these two alien lovebirds can--or should--do that is the question Freudenberger poses so beguilingly." --The Washington Post

"A marvelous book." --Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss

"The relationship between reader and writer is always something of an arranged marriage, in the sense that the reader enters a stranger's sensibility, hoping for the best. Amina and George may have a complicated connection, but Newlyweds is an unambiguous success." --Meg Wolitzer, More

"A genuinely moving story about a woman trying to negotiate two cultures, balancing her parents' expectations with her own aspirations, her ambition and cynical practicality with deeper, more romantic yearnings. . . . Freudenberger demonstrates her assurance as a novelist and her knowledge of the complicated arithmetic of familial love, and the mathematics of romantic passion." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Parts of The Newlyweds might be about the learning curve faced by any freshly married couple. . . . Like writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Ha Jin, she deftly shows how strange the rituals of suburban America seem to an observant outsider." --The Wall Street Journal

"Freudenberger's central couple are more than well-crafted characters; they shimmer with believability and self-contradicting nuance. . . . Fluid and utterly confident." --Time Out New York

"The Newlyweds is so much more than a 'lost-in-translation' romp: There are soulful depths to the sociology. . . . [A] luscious and intelligent novel that will stick with you. . . . Freudenberger keeps the wonderfulness coming." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR

"Freudenberger brings impressive attributes to bear in [The Newlyweds]: a powerful sense of empathy, of being able to imagine what it is to be someone else, to feel what someone else feels; an effective writing style that avoids drawing attention to itself; and an international sensibility, which allows her to write about places outside America not as peripheral--mere playgrounds for American characters--but as central to themselves." --The New York Times Book Review

"Once in a while, you come across a novel with characters so rich and nuanced, and situations so pitch-perfect, that you forget you're reading fiction. The Newlyweds is that sort of novel. I was floored by it--captivated from beginning to end. And now that I'm done, I can't stop thinking about it." --J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Maine

"That Amina and George manage to muddle though the first years of marriage is a testament to the power of love and respect; that we care about them all the way through says as much about Freudenberger's keen observations and generous heart." --O, The Oprah Magazine

"The Newlyweds crosses continents, cultures and generations. . . . It's funny, gracefully written and full of loneliness and yearning. It's also a candid, recognizable story about love--the real-life kind, which is often hard and sustained by hope, kindness, and pure effort." --USA Today

"Freudenberger draws women's complex lives as brilliantly as Austen or Wharton or Woolf, and, with The Newlyweds, has given a performance of beauty and grace." --Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage

"Rich, wise, bighearted. . . . Freudenberger works with care and respect, giving a full voice to every Deshi aunt, American cousin, and passing employee at the Starbucks where Amina finds a job. Freudenberger moves gracefully between South Asian fantasies of American life and the realities of bone-cold, snow-prone upstate New York--and turns the coming together of newlyweds Amina and George into a readers' banquet." --Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A

"A true triumph." --The New York Observer

"Captivating. . . . This engaging story, with its page after page of effortless prose, ultimately offers up a deeper narrative." --The Boston Globe

"Wise, timely, ripe with humor and complexity, The Newlyweds is one of the most believable love stories of our young century."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

"Amina's determination, intelligence, and resilience make her a heroine for any culture and any time." --Marie Claire

"Exceptional . . . Here is an honest depiction of life as most people actually live it: Americans and Asians, Christians and Muslims, liberals and conservatives. Freudenberger writes with a cultural fluency that is remarkable and in a prose that is clean, intelligent, and very witty." --David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World