{"id":285,"date":"2013-10-06T12:42:36","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T11:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=285"},"modified":"2013-10-06T12:42:36","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T11:42:36","slug":"an-epic-tale-about-a-small-corner-shop-new-british-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=285","title":{"rendered":"An epic tale about a small corner shop. New British Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<hgroup>\n<h2><time>The Economist, Sep 28th 2013\u00a0<\/time>|<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/printedition\/2013-09-28\">From the print edition<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/hgroup>\n<aside><strong>Marriage Material.<\/strong>\u00a0By Sathnam Sanghera.\u00a0<em>William Heinemann; 304 pages; \u00a314.99.<\/em>\u00a0Buy from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0434021903\/economistshop-21\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\u00a0<\/aside>\n<div>\n<p>THE corner shop is not a place of grand narratives. \u201cReserved for the purchase of emergency milk and Rizlas\u201d, it offers neither the drama of a supermarket nor the space for many characters. Yet it is an institution at the heart of British life, a lone outpost of commerce embedded within rows of net-curtained terraced houses, and thus a fitting prism through which to see the country.<!--more--><\/p>\n<aside>With \u201cMarriage Material\u201d Sathnam Sanghera, a business journalist formerly with the\u00a0<em>Financial Times\u00a0<\/em>and a second-generation migrant, uses a shop to consider both sweeping economic trends and the intimate ecosystem of shop life. Like Arnold Bennett\u2019s 1908 \u201cThe Old Wives\u2019 Tale\u201d (upon which it is closely modelled), this novel tells the story of two sisters at the centre of three generations of shopkeepers. Between them, Surinder and Kamaljit Bains have seen everything: promises and betrayal, cloistered homes and soaring escapes, a little ambition and a lot of disappointment. Though the sisters seem straight out of central casting\u2014one \u201cfair and slim\u201d, the other \u201cdark and stout\u201d\u2014their personal struggles give them dimension. Surinder nurses a desire for life outside the bubble of her community and her arranged-marriage destiny, whereas Kamaljit struggles to be a good daughter.<\/aside>\n<p>Yet Mr Sanghera also tells a larger story about the big political and economic struggles of the past half-century. He examines changing attitudes to immigration, the rise of big-box stores and the hollowing out of Britain\u2019s industrial centres. The West Midlands city of Wolverhampton in 1968, when the novel begins, is vastly different from the Wolverhampton of 2012 at the story\u2019s close. For one thing, \u201cBulberhampton full of bloody Iraqi now,\u201d observes one character, herself a migrant. Mr Sanghera, who grew up in Wolverhampton himself, does a good job of capturing the complications of progress. He leaves it to readers to decide whether these changes have been for the better or worse.<\/p>\n<p>There are few more profound ways for a South Asian migrant to wipe out his individuality than by becoming yet another shopkeeper, notes the youngest member of the corner-shop clan. This fine novel steps behind the counter and shows that this need not be the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist, Sep 28th 2013\u00a0|From the print edition Marriage Material.\u00a0By Sathnam Sanghera.\u00a0William Heinemann; 304 pages; \u00a314.99.\u00a0Buy from\u00a0Amazon.co.uk\u00a0 THE corner shop is not a place of grand narratives. \u201cReserved for the purchase of emergency milk and Rizlas\u201d, it offers neither the drama of a supermarket nor the space for many characters. Yet it is an institution [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,65],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}