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Good Intentions: ‘Captivating and heartbreaking’ Stylist

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I've yet to read any of Rooney's work, but I can certainly understand why critics would make the comparison. Despite Nur’s belief that he’s in an impossible position, the novel is also incredibly hopeful – maybe our immigrant parents aren’t as immovable as they seem, and perhaps the future holds more choices than we believe. It is a crackling, wryly clever depiction of standing on the precipice of adulthood, piecing together who it is you’re meant to be. It’s the countdown to the New Year, and Nur is steeling himself to tell his parents that he’s seeing someone.

Nur loves how she gets so excited about something that could so easily become mundane to other people, the same year in, year out. His mother reaches for the remote, muting the TV so that the fireworks continue but no sound comes from the bright lights. The author wrote the book jumping between different years of Nur and Yasmina’s relationship, and though this added suspense or wonder of how each grew as people, it was disappointing to see how Nur’s character was so stagnant. If truth be told I found the pages of dialogue start to become boring and dare I say a bit tennis-match style with their need for clever ripostes and comebacks.Relationship dynamics are hard, and Kasim Ali emphasized this throughout the book, giving the reader different situations that feel so human and real that just make you want to stay for the ride. It's great to see Ali highlight and criticize cultural bigotry in this way without approaching it as a monolith that unquestionably applies across the board to any and every South Asian parent, and watching Imran seek out happiness alongside Nur in spite of the obstacles he faces is incredibly endearing. it just made me feel a little bored, as i waited to read about the plot of what was currently happening. But as everything he holds dear is challenged, he is forced to ask, is love really a choice for a second-generation immigrant son like him? There's a lack of cognizance that many of these norms and practices are what our parents were taught when they were our age (or even younger), in an entirely different environment, and that more than simply laying blame and "moving on" from our parents is required to properly address our concerns or hope for our community to evolve.

There is a weird paragraph about how two characters fight: because one says that Islam should evolve with the times and become modern? A lot of that has to do with the characters, who leapt off the page, and the way that the book addressed the conflicts they experienced. Despite Nur's sense that he's impeccably right-minded and anti-racist, despite the fact that he truly loves Yasmina and wants to make his life with her, his insistence on putting off and putting off telling his family about his beloved may be less a realist's acknowledgment of the racism in the world than a kind of accommodation of or even collusion with it. Although this book is jam-packed with romance and relationships and love, it also discusses much deeper subjects and ideas that are uncanny for a romance novel.In the end, their relationship falling apart was the natural conclusion to Nur's inability to address his own failings, because he had been too busy placing those failings on others rather than ever confronting them within himself. We learn about Kate’s possibly stalling career and Leo’s plan to apply to acting schools against his mother’s wishes.

It paints an utterly human picture of South Asian life, endearing and distasteful qualities all wrapped into one per the most humble, yet critical means. Good Intentions is a beautiful and honest story that I'd defy anyone not to be pulled in by, from a fantastic new talent in contemporary fiction. It was exhausting witnessing a character who was questioning themselves and their relationship countlessly, with little to no explanation of what their issue was until the very end of the book. Nur is, ostensibly, worried about his family will take the fact that he’s dating a Black girl, so elects not to reveal this to them.On the other hand, it puts a bit of distance between Yasmina and the reader as we only see her from Nur's eyes. An exploration of the ways that race and family ties may complicate or imperil romance even if everyone means well. My grasp of events was also hampered by the flitting between present day (2019) and at various points in the relationship from 2016 onwards, I would have preferred the story to start at the beginning and then move forwards rather than jumping about.

JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. It's heartbreaking to watch Yasmina, a bright, dedicated, and loving girlfriend, suffer through a debilitating four years of growing self-doubt and worthlessness over the way that Nur treats her. Rahat is the only person who can really read and calm him – so is this actually fair on Yasmina, either. As always, Nani is in the other room, asleep, her light snoring a familiar background noise for them.He falls deeper into traps of his own making, attempting to please both Yasmina and his family until he must finally reveal the truth: Yasmina is Black, and he loves her.

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