Marriage of a Thousand Lies, SJ Sindu
Marriage of a Thousand Lies, SJ Sindu
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Marriage of a Thousand Lies
A Novel

Author: SJ Sindu

Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/13/2017

Categories: Fiction, Lgbtq+, Women


Synopsis

Lakshmi, called Lucky, is an unemployed millennial programmer. She likes to dance, have a drink or two, and she makes art on commission. Fifty bucks gets you high-resolution digital images of anything you want (orcs, mermaids, cos-playing couples in sexy boudoir scenes) and a nice frameable print. Lucky's husband, Krishna, is an editor for a greeting card company. Both are secretly gay. They present their conservative Sri Lankan-American families with a heterosexual front, while each dates on the side. When Lucky's grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her mother's home to act as caretaker and unexpectedly reconnects with her childhood best friend and first lover, Nisha. Nisha has agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't know, but finds herself attracted to her old friend.

The attraction is mutual and Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And what does Lucky want, anyway? To live openly means that Lucky would lose most of the community she was born into—a community she loves, an irreplaceable home. Lucky, an outsider no matter what choices she makes, is pushed to the breaking point.

About SJ Sindu

SJ Sindu's debut novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, is forthcoming in 2017 from Soho Press. Her hybrid fiction and nonfiction chapbook, I Once Met You But You Were Dead, was the winner of the Split Lip Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest. Sindu's creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brevity, the Normal School, the Los Angeles Review of Books, apt, Vinyl Poetry, PRISM International, VIDA, rkvry quarterly, and elsewhere.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane

What a gorgeous, heartbreaking novel. A lesbian woman is in a marriage of convenience with her gay best friend, trying to live a lie, trying to do what her community wants her to do, while loving her best friend who loves her back but is also willing to live a lie. Lucky's story is wrought and inten......more

Goodreads review by Whitney

3.5 stars I think my main takeaway from this book is just how masterful the writing is and how true and raw of a culture/family exploration this was. Whereas I expected this book to follow Lucky's fake marriage and her exploration of her sexuality, it was actually really rooted in her family and her......more

Goodreads review by Jessica

LGBT fiction remains a relatively white male place (it's much more G than L, B, T, etc.) so it's always welcome to see a new entry into queer fiction about a brown woman. Lucky is Sri Lankan, her family is tight knit and their community likes things just so. Girls grow up and marry boys and have bab......more

The premise of this book was immediately interesting: lesbian Sri Lankan-American woman is married to a gay Indian-American man so both can keep their sexuality a secret, while dating on the side. It’s an entertaining story and makes for quick reading, but unfortunately it comes across as immature,......more