Review of Liquid by Mariam Rahmani

*Liquid: A Love Story* by Mariam Rahmani (2025). Published by Algonquin Books.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

As a book blogger, something I’ve always been super clear about and dedicated towards promoting are local libraries. I know having access to a good library is a privilege, and there are countries where people don’t really have access to books at all. I am so grateful every day that I have access to a decent library system, especially in today’s world.

Today’s blog post was a long way coming. While this is going to come out later in fall 2025 because of my publishing schedule, as I write out blog posts long before I end up publishing them (unless it’s an advance copy or timely release for television/movies), I have been wanting to read Liquid ever since I saw it in a roundup of books to read when it was first coming out.

I did procrastinate on this one for a hot minute, but then when I remembered it existed at the right moment of my unemployment and that I wanted to read it, I immediately put a request in at my local library branch. There was a bit of a waiting list before I got it, but I had it in my ends in less than two weeks. Then I read it in one sitting!

Let’s get into the blog post now, shall we?

An Iranian-Indian-American woman grapples with her dating life, professional failures, and now the fact her father is dying in Iran.

Our protagonist of this novel remains unnamed throughout the course of the book, although she leaves quite the impression in this short little story of hers. We open up her tale in Los Angeles, where she is struggling with finding a job after completing her PhD. As the daughter of an Indian academic and Iranian immigrant, failure is not really an option—it’s truly a cultural thing here. If you know you know.

At the beginning of the novel she hangs out with her best friend Adam, a poet who hung up his creativity in poetry to become a marketer, after his current girlfriend situation wreaks havoc on his emotional state. Our protagonist brews up an idea not long after this: if she’s this unemployed two years after finishing a PhD from UCLA of all places, then she’s going to do an experiment.

She opens up a spreadsheet, and with some musings on her own research (which involves comparing Western and Eastern attitudes of marriage and what constitutes as love through the mediums of literature and film), she decides she’s going to go on one hundred dates with people.

It doesn’t matter who or what they as identify as—she’s going to go on a hundred dates with all different kinds of people and record what she experiences with them. The first section of the novel is her grappling with the dates she’s going on, her research, and the trauma of her upbringing (although she was raised in a pretty comfortable and successful immigrant household).

The characters she meets are a wide range of life experiences. Some are rich, others not so much and are sending her Venmo requests despite posturing as rich. But they contrast greatly to the protagonist and her experiment, showing a kaleiscope of perspectives in Los Angeles.

This also reminded me of how the children of academics are more likely to become academics, as well as the Iranian mythos of success. Our protagonist has an Indian mother, but I latch onto the Iranian aspect of her life because I myself am the child of an Iranian immigrant. The protagonist has done everything right, but is unable to graps the same success her parents had when they came to this coutnry and struggled to get to where they are today.

We see more of the cracks with her relationship with her mother in the second part of the novel, which takes place in Tehran. The story takes a sudden turn when the protagonist gets the message that her father is dying in Tehran. He has been living in Iran for the past few years in the home his mother once lived in.

So our protagonist packs her bags, doesn’t tell Adam she left town, and heads on a long journey to Iran. There, she finds a specific date with an artist, but then she also has to grapple with the fact her father is actively dying in a public hospital in Tehran.

This portion of the novel is much more dense than the beginning, and it has more philosophical musings as it slows down. I was kind of wishing we spent more of the story in this little world, but I see why the novel was structured the way it was.

Overall Thoughts

I made the mistake of looking at the Goodreads rating while finding the cover image file for this book, and I was honestly shocked at how bad the reviews were for this novel. I actually and genuinely enjoyed it a lot, even though I’ll admit the first section of the novel didn’t appeal to me as much as the second one in Tehran.

The writing was really clear and crisp. I felt like I knew this character and the two worlds she was straddling throughout the novel. While I might not relate to and understand her little science experiment, I’m happy everything worked out for her in the end, even if it took some major soul searching and something traumatic to happen.

My only critique comes from a difference in perspective and not of the book’s actual content. This is very much an academic book, and I would argue that the main character comes from a major place of privilege. I say this as someone who grew up lower income and an Iranian American—these stories, especially from Los Angeles Iranians, come from a place of privilege.

There’s nothing wrong with these perspectives, but I found it to not be relatable in many different ways. And that’s fine in the end, but it’s something I’m grappling with as I collect Iranian-American stories—there’s a distinct divide between those raised in wealthier areas like LA versus the immigrants who weren’t wealthy, like my community, and had to claw their way up.

I don’t mean to erase the protagonist’s Indian identity. I wondered if the author was part Indian because the main character is more immersed with the world of Iranian culture and language. We get some explanation as to why this happened in her upbringing, but this felt like an afterthought sometimes that only emerged when she was analyzing herself and mother. And maybe this is not a critique, but more a musing of mine.

Go read this if you’re interested and ignore the bad reviews. I think it’s worth trying for a hundred pages before giving up if it’s not your style.

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