Interesting read. A little too academic for my taste. It felt very much like a book of two halves, not one I'd personally read again.

I pers nally found the illness/death of main character's father rather distressing to read.

I picked up Liquid by Mariam Rahmani because the description was giving smart-girl rom-com. A girl goes on 100 dates in an attempt to find a rich man, but with comparison to Kaveh Akbar and The Idiot? Sounds at least moderately up my alley.

What ensues is more of a biting critique with how our notions of love and marriage intersect with capital in modern society (both in the East and the West). While our main character is looking for a rich spouse to help keep her afloat whilst she adjuncts (or not) while attempting to write a book, nearly every relationship in the volume has a lens of capital applied to it. Our main characters parents own marriage was shaped by the role of her mother as breadwinner and her best friend Adam is dependent on a house given to his mother by his father's side of the family as a kind of hush money. 

Not to mention, each of the highlighted dates elevates a certain aspect of modern dating in this capitalist world. (I'm particularly fond of the date she goes on with a man whom she really enjoys just to find out he's poly, and thus unavailable on the marriage mart). This is complimented by the aesthetics of the spreadsheet, which seem to indicate that dating is something to be calculated and or tallied.

However, when our main character must go to Iran after her father experiences a health emergency, she must question what she really wants in life

and ultimately, leans on other modes of capital (her mother) to keep her afloat.

I think I enjoyed this more in theory than in practice-- at times it was repetitive and a bit dull, but the thoughts undergirding it appear to be sharp.

Huh! It kind of takes a turn, in an interesting way. 

Gorgeous prose, a story of belonging and not belonging, of love and power and grief. Of losing and finding one's purpose. A character and style that will stay with you for a long time after reading. 

The concept of this book pulled me in quickly and the first half-ish of the book had me in it. The second half didn’t ramp up on story. In fact, the story from the first half almost entirely came to a halt. However, it seems the intention for this was to slow time down and give space for reflection, both character and reader. The contrast in pacing didn’t work for me although the unfolding of the theme and the construction of the development did. 

Overall it’s a really good book that only felt imbalanced. I wasn’t as invested in the story as I wanted to be but there is merit to the book.