Synopses & Reviews
Debut novelist Lesley Jørgensen delivers a rich, funny delight of a novel in which the marriage plot” is on dazzling display. But as scandals, secrets, culture clashes, and misunderstandings aboundhow will anyone find time for love? Mrs. Begum is the doting, anxious mother of three grown childrenTariq, an art curator with a secret hes not quite ready to share with his parents; her baby, Shunduri, the pampered princess of the family; and her daughter Rohimum, who has returned home to rural England in shame. Mrs. Begum is determined to marry them off, and marry them off well. But where to start?
Mrs. Begums husband, the fastidious, stuffy Dr. Choudhury, has moved the family to a cottage on the grounds of Bourne Abbey, a grand but crumbling estate whose restoration he is overseeing. There, the Choudhury family lives alongside the estates youngish heirsHenry and Richard.
The Bournes and the Choudhurys are equally snared in the spider-web of centuries-old tradition, but the Abbey itself houses a mystery that will reveal long-hidden entanglementsones that the two families never anticipated
Review
Praise for A Matter of Marriage (Previously published as Cat and Fiddle)
“A big-hearted, clamorous comedy of East-meets-West…This jet-fueled melodrama crashes from one unprecedented crisis to the next, taking in desperate family secrets, betrayals, misunderstandings, walled-up mysteries, and delicious coincidence.”—The Sydney Herald
“Occasionally you love a book so much that its difficult to close the door on its world. [A Matter of Marriage]—with its warm, evocative, and hysterically funny story—is such a book. A whiff of Pride and Prejudice is brilliantly mixed in with colorful layers of Indian culture.”—Good Reading Magazine
“This is a big, fat, satisfying read, which will appeal to fans of books featuring intricate plots, family webs, rollicking love stories, multiculturalism (particularly with a sub-continental theme), and clashes between tradition and modernity, religion and culture. I adored this sprawling, funny novel. This is highly recommended late-summer reading.”—Bookseller and Publisher (Starred Review)
“Lesley Jørgensen explores [her characters] lives with exquisite sensitivity and delicious irony…[Her] benevolent storytelling...has a whimsical surface on which the most commonplace happenings are greeted with something like wonder…A remarkable accomplishment.”—The Saturday Age
“Jørgensen steps so adroitly in and out of the heads of these wonderful characters that its as if shes at your shoulder, the perfect traveling companion on the novels journey: chatty, warm, compassionate, and funny. An exuberant debut, bubbling with energy and insight.”—Cate Kennedy, Author of Like a House on Fire
About the Author
Lesley Jørgensen trained as a registered nurse while completing simultaneous degrees in arts and the law. She has worked as a medical negligence lawyer in Australia and England. While in England, she married into a Muslim AngloBangladeshi family. She now lives in Adelaide, Australia, with her two children. A Matter of Marriage (formerly Cat and Fiddle) is her first novel and the winner of the 2011 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize for an unpublished manuscript by an Australian writer aged thirty-five and over.