May 21st6:30pm
Have you ever watched a woman blow up her life, and thought, good for her? This is a book club for those who seek to disrupt notions of domestic bliss - we want batshit plots, women who don't settle, and eleventh hour plot twists. We want all this packaged into a very literary 300 pages or less. This book club will explore should-be and to-be classics by literary hotties of centuries past. Leave the dirty dishes at home and come indulge with us.
This month we'll discuss Mariam Rahmani's brilliant debut - in which The Marriage Plot meets The Idiot - which tells the story of a young Muslim scholar stuck in the mire of adjunct professorship in Los Angeles who decides to give up her career in academia and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer, Liquid.
“I love this book. After hilariously tearing through the faux-profundity of so many of our cultural fixations—from Los Angeles, to academia, to rom-coms—the novel moves to Tehran, and slowly morphs into a touching examination of vulnerability, dislocation, grief, and longing. Underneath the posturing and razor-sharp wit, we find the yearning heart and hard-won intelligence of a young woman who has found herself adrift. I couldn't stop thinking about Liquid—sexy, sly, daring, and utterly brilliant. Mariam Rahmani is the most exciting new writer I've read in ages.”—Justin Torres, National Book Award-winning author of Blackouts and We the Animals
“Liquid is an absolute lifeline—Mariam Rahmani's prose expands what's possible on the page, with a novel that's loving, cutting, mournful, and hilarious. Rahmani knows LA and Tehran. Rahmani knows sex, pleasure, and pain. Rahmani knows loss, and care, and the stickiness in-between. Liquid is a dream of a book—written with heart and feeling and longing and clarity, bracingly astute, elastic, and precise—an absolute delight expanding the possibilities in American fiction.”—Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Family Meal and Memorial
The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just "marry rich."
But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County.
Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time.
For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Elif Batuman, Liquid delivers a modern tale of romance, loss, and belonging like no other. Mariam Rahmani’s gorgeous high-wire satire explodes off the page with verve and originality in this riveting spin on the classic romantic comedy.
Contact Genay, at bookclubs@mcnallyjackson.com with any questions.
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.