LIQUID

“The course of true love never did run smooth” according to Shakespeare, and that proves to be the case in this contemporary tale of looking for love in all the wrong places.

Rahmani’s unnamed narrator is a young, queer Muslim woman struggling to cling to the lowest rungs of the academic ladder in Los Angeles two years after she’s earned a Ph.D. in literature. Her thesis examined how the “companionate” model of modern marriage replaced older “contract” arrangements where goods and services (children, money, protection) were exchanged, not affectionate feelings. When she fails to publish her thesis as a book and succeed in the ranks of adjunct appointments, the narrator feels the looming prospect of yet another disappointment: her parents’ perception of her as an “old maid” and the resulting marriage setup her Indian and Iranian immigrant parents will surely attempt. During a dinner liberally lubricated by wine, an old college friend suggests the solution: “Just marry rich.” Rahmani’s sardonic narrator approaches this project—motivated by economic and other desperations—by opening an Excel spreadsheet, creating an online dating profile, and setting a deadline for going on 100 dates and securing an engagement by the beginning of the fall semester. Thus begins an odyssey of bad dates with a variety of Los Angelenos—male and female—who are themselves looking for love, a hookup, or some company. The story takes a more contemplative tone as the setting switches to Tehran, where Rahmani’s security-seeker and her mother have traveled to attend to her estranged father’s serious illness. Time away from the spreadsheet and in a family setting provides some clarity for an intriguing main character.

A thoroughly modern combination of snark and sincerity on the road to love.