Bitter Sweets

Bitter Sweets

Bitter Sweets

Shona Karim is in love. When she first sets eyes on Parvez at the age of ten, she knows he is the man of her dreams. Just like her father - tricked into marriage by her shamelessly deceitful mother - she is a hopeless romantic. Years later, lying to themselves and their families, the young lovers elope to start a new life above a sweet shop in south London. But Shona's inheritance is one of double lives and complicit deception. As time passes, and her children are born, it appears that she too has dark secrets that are about to be exposed. Can a family built on lies ever shake off its legacy? And can love ever be strong enough to right the wrongs of the past? 'Combining the cultural heritage of Monica Ali's Brick Lane with the intimate humour of family life in Roddy Doyle's novels' Easy Living 'Has the right blend of laughter and tears, a Brit-Asian crossover worth putting your feet up for' She

Bitter Sweets

In 1950s Bengal, Henna Rub, a precocious, wayward teenager, brings off a brilliant marriage to a wealthy romantic, Ricky Karim, trapping him with a web of lies that she has spun with her wheeler-dealer father. And so on his wedding night, believing himself married to an educated, sonnet-reading, tennis-playing soul mate, Ricky is horrified to discover that his new bride is in fact a lazy, illiterate, shopkeeper's daughter. As Ricky and Henna uneasily tolerate their loveless marriage, the way is paved for a future of double-lives and complicit deception - an unspoken family tradition that is inherited by their daughter Shona. But two decades later, with her own children grown, it is Shona who is forced to discover unpalatable truths about her loved ones...