But Rob Doyle suggests that maybe having pariah status isn’t such a bad thing. “It strikes me that really good writing and great literature historically has not come from glory and triumph. It has come from abjection and opposition.”

Absorbing, compelling, and beautifully written . Its ending brought me close to tears." —Beth O'Leary, bestselling author of The Flatshare He does this with many topics, one being race, and the abhorrences People of Color and non-whites have to go through in this crude world. This was a common thread throughout the book but wasn't something that felt overly redundant. A] clever novel about vulnerability and victimhood that subtly subverts the reader’s expectations’ Sunday Times I really enjoyed the writing (the banter between the main leads, the descriptions of the food omg) such that I ended up tabbing way more than expected!! 😀 tbh this was going so well and I fully expected to give this 3.75-4 stars but the way the ending was executed and after sitting down and thinking through my feelings for the book again, I decided on 3.5 stars. A love story full of hard choices and tensions, family obligations and racial prejudices. Not to be missed by fans of Modern Love."Growing up “very poor” in Birmingham, he says “I used to feel shame in being that kind of person.” Ali “wasn’t a boy who liked football or cars, or whatever you deem to be masculine”, but someone who “read books and much more appreciated the company of the women in the family” and the South Asian community he grew up in. Like Nur, the protagonist in Good Intentions, he loves to cook. “The men in my family were like, ‘Why is he cooking, why is he cleaning?’” he recalls. Yet, we also tend to underestimate our parents — a theme Ali highlights in his book. “Sometimes we talk about our parents as being a product of their time and their environment — we think that we have all these ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ ideas of the world and that our parents are not going to be accepting of those opinions,” explains Ali. “I really wanted to talk about the difference in politics between our parents and us and the gap between those dimensions, but I also really wanted to talk about giving our parents a chance to change with us.” Representing modern and multidimensional Muslims Kishani Widyaratna, editorial director of one of the UK’s most important literary imprints, 4th Estate, insists men aren’t being discriminated against. However, she does believe there is “a predominance of white, middle-class cis women at all levels of the publishing industry”. Widyaratna thinks that certain “received ideas” do need to be challenged – not least the reliance on “comp titles”, the system by which publishers consider a submission by comparing it to other similar books. The most obvious example of this has been the Sally Rooney phenomenon – in which every publisher rushed to find young female writers to fill what one called the “Rooney-shaped hole”.

On the surface Good Intentions is a poignant romance about the cultural barriers that stand in the way of two young people pursuing an honest relationship. Yet beneath there is a cautionary tale about what happens when you get so caught up in your own vulnerability that you forget your responsibility to others.' The Sunday Times An eloquently lyrical and thought-provoking novel, this book grapples with subject matters of everything you can imagine. From race, to identity, to the world of technology, to gentrification, to discovery, to self h*rm, all the way to the adversity of life itself. The reliance on that as a mode of thinking leads to publishers reproducing what already exists,” says Widyaratna. “It doesn’t allow publishers to innovate.” Good Intentions is a magnificent and messy love story that broke my heart. Bittersweet and tender, Ali writes about modern day relationships with such compassion. This is a novel for anyone who has ever known what it is to be conflicted in falling in love, feeling the expectations of our families but also ourselves; it is for anyone who has ever felt their heart breaking under the weight of it all' Huma Qureshi, author of How We Met however … i found nur and yasmina - especially yasmina - hard to warm to. i struggled to root for either of them. i think them having flaws was effective and refreshing to see, however it’s important to root for characters and often i felt disconnected; which could be due to the 3rd person narration. however, i LOVED the side characters - imran and rahat 🥺 every time they were in a scene i got very very happy - they were just so lovable, and i wish i’d felt that way about nur and yasmina. i also loved nur’s siblings - they were such a great addition to the story.Since Riz Ahmed delivered that speech in Parliament in 2017, since he created the “Riz test”, a sort-of Bechdel test for Muslims, I have noticed a shift. Recently, I watched Ramy, an American sitcom by Ramy Youssef about a young Muslim in New Jersey. The show depicts Ramy trying to become stronger in his faith, and has honest conversations about how hard that can be.