I've been in a ginormous reading slump lately so I really just couldn't get into this one. Nothing against the book, it just didn't have that spark that made me want to continue reading.

Persuasion is one of my favorite Jane Austen books and in Yours, Eventually Nura Maznavi does a wonderful job of translating the story and the emotion to the modern world and a different culture. Perhaps because the Pakistani culture can have a strong family influence on children and a chance to change more easily to a “higher social class” than some other cultures, the story of Anne and Frederick makes sense as the story of Asma and Farooq. It was especially gratifying that Maznavi provides redemption for Asma's sisters. In Austen's work they come across as stereotypes (though perhaps she is the source of the original type.)
I also enjoyed that the story didn’t become a more typical “romance” novel with sex becoming a chapter of its own. I recommend it to all readers of contemporary Austen homages.

Yours, Eventually is a second chance love story set in a wealthy Pakistani-American community in Bay Area. A debut novel by author Nura Maznavi, it is modeled on Austen’s Persuasion. Austen is a fiction magnet for south-Asian writers (mainly because most south-Asians would have experienced a version of Austen’s fictional world in their personal life), and there are several ‘desi’ versions of Persuasion out there. So, in some ways Maznavi is treading an old ground here but I was interested in finding out if she makes something new out of a familiar classical story and how the plot lines and characters are updated in a twenty-first century setting.

Asma Ibrahim is an unmarried twenty something muslim-American woman completing her final year of medical residency. She is a talented physician and loves her job in the emergency department—the adrenaline rush of treating sudden and unexpected medical emergencies, solving medical problems and the easy camaraderie of fellow residents. Great though her professional life is, she is deeply unhappy in her personal life. Years ago, during her freshman year she fell in love with Farooq, another freshman. They wanted to marry but Asma was persuaded by her father and aunt to give him up because he was considered not suitable (as being not wealthy enough). Over the years, Asma has come to realize that he is the love of her life and angry at herself for dumping him.

Asma is the middle of three daughters of a wealthy businessman and lives with her father and unmarried elder sister Iman in a posh neighborhood in Palo Alto. They are part of a tightly knit affluent Muslim community—conservative, status conscious, snobbish and brutally competitive. Membership in the community requires being born into wealth, marrying into wealth, having Ivy League degrees and prestigious jobs. Both Iman and Asma have careers but are slighted a lot because of their unmarried status and, the ‘aunties’ of their community are constantly trying to fix them with ‘eligible’ men.

The novel begins at a lavish party thrown by Mr. Ibrahim, to celebrate his retirement from his import business, attended by all the movers and shakers of the Palo Alto Muslim community. It is not exactly retirement because Ibrahim has lost a great deal of money in bad investments and the business has gone under. He and Iman are moving into their smaller home in Sacramento while their Palo Alto McMansion is rented out. Her home situation is a sore point with Asma because she has assumed the role of responsible family caretaker since her mother died and feels trapped by the practicalities of living with her father and her elder sister. During the party, Asma finds out, along with every other member of their community, that her former boyfriend Farooq has sold his start-up company for 500 million dollars.

As if that is not enough, it turns out that the new tenants for their McMansion are Farooq’s sister and her husband. Suddenly, after eight years of total absence, he is back in her life. Farooq is also now a hot marriage prospect for every unmarried Muslim woman. Isma tries to let him know that she still loves him, but Farooq still hurt and angry wants nothing to do with her. Though sad, his rejection gives her the time and space to think about how she wants to live her life and where she wants to go with it. When her supervisor at the hospital mentions that Asma is the top candidate for a job opening coming up, Asma decides that she will accept it and continue to live in Palo Alto even though her father expects her to move back to Sacramento. Alas, all her plans are undone when her father gets a massive heart attack on her graduation day. She lets go of the exciting job opportunity and moves to Sacramento to take care of him.

What Asma finds at home is that though her father is ill, socially he and Iman have found their groove, networked to the haughty, wealthy Muslim community. Iman, to the surprise of many, has gotten engaged to a wealthy man. When Asma speaks disparagingly about her engagement, long simmering resentments between siblings bubble to the surface and some home truths are exchanged. After much soul-searching, Asma decides to move back to Palo Alto with her father’s blessing.

In reworking Austen’s novel into a contemporary south Asian Muslim American community, the author includes every character, every plot line from the original. Some work well, some not so well. She does a terrific job of portraying the community with all its snobbery, backbiting, hypocrisy and shallow sensibilities. The cultural setting is authentic and she captures the absurdities of conventional matchmaking with tart humor. The conversational tic of prefacing achievement of every status marker with ‘MashAllah (god has willed it) “MashAllah, my eldest grandson made it to Dartmouth”! “MashAllah, my grandson is pre-med at Cornell-that’s an Ivy Leagueschool, MashAllah”! is priceless.

Asma is well drawn. She is passive, angry and not at all saintly, but is given an interiority that makes her a sympathetic character and, eventually she stops being passive and finds her way to happiness.The story is told from Asma’s POV which means that we know very little about Farooq’s, his thoughts or his feelings. There don’t seem to be much chemistry between them when they initially fall in love and later he is mostly absent from the story.They barely talk to each other except when they are in company and one wonders, why in this age of communicating in so many ways, they don’t pour their heart out in an email or a text message (like Captain Wentworth). Their coming together in the end felt totally passionless. The novel also has characters plucked straight from the original (for example, the heir to the baronetcy), but they do not add to the story in any meaningful way.

Though the romance is weak, I would recommend this version of Persuasion to anyone who is interested in knowing how love and marriage play out in a very conventional south Asian immigrant community.

I am a sucker for a Jane Austen adaptation and this book did not disappoint. This is an adaptation of Persuasion, set within the Pakistani culture, and I think this story lent itself to this setting in particular. Jane Austen is noted for her irreverent wit and commentary about the inequity in class and culture. Still, I think people also fail to note her love of family and how family is so essential. This book portrays the best of those aspects of Jane Austen's Persuasion. We see how the love of family created heartbreak; however, that same love of family helped Asma to rediscover herself and come into her own. This was such a clever adaption of a story fraught with so many emotions. I was so engaged with this book that I could not put it down, I was sad when it ended, but glad I had read this lovely story. Disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley for an honest review.