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    Together Tea
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    Together Tea
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    Together Tea
    Ebook319 pages5 hours

    Together Tea

    By Marjan Kamali

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In Together Tea, Marjan Kamali’s delightful and heartwarming debut novel, Darya has discovered the perfect gift for her daughter’s twenty-fifth birthday: an ideal husband. Mina, however, is fed up with her mother’s years of endless matchmaking and the spreadsheets grading available Iranian-American bachelors. Having spent her childhood in Tehran and the rest of her life in New York City, Mina has experienced cultural clashes firsthand, but she’s learning that the greatest clashes sometimes happen at home.

    After a last ill-fated attempt at matchmaking, mother and daughter embark on a return journey to Iran. Immersed once again in Persian culture, the two women gradually begin to understand each other. But when Mina falls for a young man who never appeared on her mother’s matchmaking radar, will Mina and Darya’s new-found appreciation for each other survive?

    Together Tea is a moving and joyous debut novel about family, love, and finding the place you truly belong.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 21, 2013
    ISBN9780062236821
    Author

    Marjan Kamali

    Marjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. She is the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award. She is the author of The Lion Women of Tehran, The Stationery Shop, and Together Tea. Marjan lives with her husband in the Boston area. They have two children.

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    Reviews for Together Tea

    4/5

    62 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Together Tea by Marjan Kamali opens in 1996 when matchmaking mother, Darya brings her daughter, Mina together with a Iranian-American that was perfect on a spreadsheet, but failed to live up to expectations in real life. Mina is fed up with this constant push to find a husband. Darya feels it is her job as a mother to see her daughter settled with a husband and prospects for a family.This book is about family, relationships and finding where one belongs. When Mina decides to go back to Iran for a visit, Darya comes along with her. Once again immersed in the Persian culture mother and daughter realize that neither feels truly American or truly Iranian, this in turn helps them turn to each other with a new understanding. Mina does meet the love of her life, and he ironically is an Iranian-American who somehow escaped being analysed by one of her mother’s spreadsheets.The author tells her story in a light, humorous manner and at first I thought that I had picked up a chick-lit romance but then she veered into more serious material with descriptions of the Iranian Revolution and the difficult time the family had both there and in starting over again in America. I did enjoy learning more about the culture and people of Iran, but I would rather the author hadn’t stressed the romance angle quite so much.
    • 5/5
      For me, somehow, chick lit transcends the genre when it takes place in the unfamiliar confines of a Third World country. This novel takes place in Queens NY and in Iran. Mina is the daughter of an Iranian doctor who brought his wife and three children to the US after Mina's grandmother is killed in a market bombing at the start of the Iran-Iraq war. The children adapt quickly, but her father Baba and mother Darya work in a pizza parlor and a dry cleaners until their Iranian credentials are accepted. It is quite a shock for the formerly upper middle class family. Mina, in business school when she'd truly rather be a painter, decides to return to Iran and Darya joins her, and then the novel truly springs to life. This is above a beach read, a good one for a hammock and a lazy breeze.
    • 4/5
      A really lovely and touching story. Not at all what I expected from the synopsis. Thought it was going to be a light matchmaking romp but it was so much more.
    • 4/5
      Together Tea overflows with all the family, love, kindness, romance, colors, scents, touches, cooking, fear, and death that were left behind in Iran during the Revolutionwhich followed the overthrow of the Shah. The move to New York City brought safety and, ultimately, jobs, money, university educations, and freedom.Yet the highly entitled Darya shows little gratitude for all she has and that her husband has achieved for her and their family. Her daughter, Mina, similarly takes much for granted - who is paying for her apartment, her education, and for the return trip to Iran (which she just decides to take without even asking for the considerablemoney it will cost her family)...?Where's the Gratitude Tea?Instead, Darya flirts with another student and lies to her husband, then she and Mina depart for Iran.The dangers they and Bita and Ramin face there feel contrived and do not elicit any real awarenessof the violence, torture, and murder they kept exposing themselves to. The disappearance of Mina's black eye spots felt unreal. Teas in lukewarm water was way overdone - if anything, restaurant water arrives too hot.Parviz comes across as a caricature - hard to picture all this "jumping" - yet he is the only one with a real sense of humor and perspective. Sam remains a mystery - what attracted him to Darya and whatwere his actual intentions if she responded to his invitations? Same with Ramin - what were his thoughts?Those of Agha Jan? and, were Cyrus and Darius really good leaders to their people...?TOGETHER Tea was an enjoyable book and I look forward to more and deeper volumes from Marjan Kamali,illuminating even more of the rich Iranian and Persian culture she has so beautifully described.
    • 4/5
      Darya, an Iranian immigrant living in New York, has found the perfect gift for her daughter Mina's 25th birthday; using spreadsheets and matchmaking skills, she has found her an ideal husband. Mina is fed up with her mother's endless attempts to find a husband for her. After the latest ill-fated attempt, mother and daughter make the journey back to Iran, the country they fled 15 years ago. While immersed in Persian culture, the two women come to understand each other. But when Mina falls for an Iranian American while on their trip, will the new found appreciation between mother and daughter survive?I really enjoyed this story; it was charming, but at the same time, it was not just "lightweight chick lit" either. Even though there is some romance in it, it is not the main theme of the story, and it doesn't even happen until the last third of the book. At the heart of this story is the love between a mother and her daughter.I enjoyed reading about the Iranian culture, the beautiful parts of it that we never see through the news media. This story takes place in the years between 1978 and 1996.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful moving book, a coming of age story
      about Mina, a Persian girl who loves with her family from Iran during the revolution in 1978. The story follows Mina from Iran to America and ends with her marrying. I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. ❤️
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable and engrossing read, although sometimes a bit uneven. A young Iranian-American woman and her matchmaking mother return to contemporary Ivan to discover themselves. Good portrayal of Iran and contemporary immigrant experience.