Good Intentions: ‘Captivating and heartbreaking’ Stylist

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Deftly transporting readers between that first night and the years beyond, Kasim Ali's Good Intentions exposes with unblinking authenticity the complexities of immigrant families and racial prejudice. A careful examination of a burgeoning relationship, started at university and continuing into the world beyond. Kasim Ali works at Penguin Random House and has previously been shortlisted for Hachette’s Mo Siewcherran Prize, longlisted for the 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, and has contributed to The Good Journal .

As mentioned, I didn't really like the way the ending was executed but I was satisfied with where Yasmina and Nur's relationship went. The story was told in a non-linear narrative, jumping back and forth to different times, which helped to build the story in an interesting way and kept a good pace. A sensitive, smooth-toned, and absorbingly honest novel that makes us question our inner worlds at a time when this kind of self-examination might be the thing that saves us.Deftly exploring family obligation and racial prejudice alongside the flush of first love, Good Intentions is a captivating and powerful modern love story that announces a thrilling new voice in British fiction. In Good Intentions, Kasim Ali not only lays bare the sweetness and nerves of first love, but also levels an unflinching gaze on the prejudices and racism within minority communities. I appreciate this is a story based on the two main characters, their backgrounds and their relationship but I found I wasn’t massively invested in them both and their wasn’t much depth to their characters.

In line with the previous point, Ali marvelously builds a full cast of identifiable, yet complex characters. Nur has offered to take his entire family to London before, to pay for the train tickets and the hotel, let them see in real life what they have so often watched through a screen, but each time they have refused, saying it is too much money.

It’s supposedly about race and religion in the UK but literally NOTHING HAPPENS except for a bunch of aimless conversations and “pre-dates” between Muslims who “don’t date”. Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. There is a weird paragraph about how two characters fight: because one says that Islam should evolve with the times and become modern? I related to this, coming from a Pakistani family myself I often think twice before making certain decisions and questioning myself! Deftly transporting readers between that first night and the years beyond, Good Intentions exposes with unblinking authenticity the complexities of immigrant families and racial prejudice.

You fake being this heightened version of yourself, hide away the flaws and the cracks, make sure they can't see your bleeding heart and your trauma. And at least this flowering of books being published by/about people of colour is continuing on, not showing signs of getting pushed back down again.There are many thought provoking nuances to this book, the author explores the complexities of cultural racism, lifestyle expectations, family, friendship, mental health struggles, self-harm, anxiety, religion, homosexuality and colourism. If he’s being honest, there is something about watching together, about sitting there, year after year at home, that even he likes. Oooooh love this representation of romance (or deep connection generally) between people of color, and I’m also heartened to hear about the author’s exploration of mental health and toxic masculinity! This was a wonderful look at the challenges of romantic love with someone outside your culture/race.

everything that's a no in Islam, is made out to like oh people are this judgmental and it's made out to be that its people's beliefs and that they are rigid to the point of ridiculing it out. Opening on New Years Eve, with Nur gathering up the courage to tell his parents about Yasmina, the novel takes a non-linear route through the four years of their relationship before this point and the ways in which Nur’s family react to his secret. A] clever debut… Ali explores racism, the difficulty of navigating cultural heritage and the travails of early adulthood [with] a climactic sucker punch’ Metro You may also be interested in.Despite Nur’s belief that he’s in an impossible position, the novel is also incredibly hopeful – maybe our immigrant parents aren’t as immovable as they seem, and perhaps the future holds more choices than we believe. Nur and Hawa both have depression (and Nur anxiety as well) and I thought it was good how it showed that symptoms eased and got worse throughout.