Tahmima Anam

A quirky, funny, deeply intelligent story of love, big dreams, starting up and feminist geekdom.

The Startup Wife

Brilliant coder Asha Ray is poised to revolutionize artificial intelligence when she is reunited with her high school crush, Cyrus Jones. Cyrus inspires Asha to write a new algorithm. Before she knows it, she's abandoned her PhD program, they've exchanged vows, and gone to work at an exclusive tech incubator called Utopia. The platform creates a sensation, with millions of users seeking personalized rituals every day. Will Cyrus and Asha's marriage survive the pressures of sudden fame, or will she become overshadowed by the man everyone is calling the new messiah? Author of "The Bones of Grace." Print run 75,000.

A Novel

Liyah 🤎

I thought this book would be really different than it was. It had some elements of the type of story i expected as a maybe pop feminist tongue-in-cheek novel about women in the workplace/tech. That story though was also buried under a sense of dystopia or doomsday rhetoric. I think I would have liked the story better if the tech company had been less woo-woo and more basic. I think the added religious tones added an unnecessary gravitas that i don't feel like was executed well. It felt like there were two genres of story being mashed together strangely. At times i was reading what felt like a relatively light-hearted story of a wife working with her husband and being left behind but one that never seemed to really interrogate it to far because at the same time the book was being some sort of dystopia late-stage capitalism techno drama. The stakes of the company felt like it buried the message about being a working wife. it felt like their central conflict wasn't as much the way women are rendered invisible but that Cyrus was a megalomaniac rebuilding religion in his image and Asha was enabling him b/c she was in some ways one of his devotees too. Now perhaps either story would've been interesting on their own but together it was just weird and off-kilter. The book seemed to rise and rise and rise and then just...dissipate. No spoilers but the ending was unsettling because of its references to the current time and because that reference to the present made it annoyingly speculative instead of definitive. I also just generally hate books set too obviously in the present. In some ways, the book's execution felt to simple to carry the weight of what it wanted to do, yet at the same time heavy because of the weight of the themes it wanted to pull off but couldn't. All in all was not a big fan.

Kweh Quiambao

Finally found a book that I can say is similar to Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (in terms of product development and starting a business in tech), my number 1 book for 2022! We have this couple dynamic who built this amazing app and a third character to do everything else (business side) which is exactly like Marx. The 3 navigate their way into success. And to copy what I wrote for that review: they now have enormous pressure to build better games, their relationships had been inevitably stinted, their own selfishness finally having consequences.🔥

I feel like I'm in a sci-fi world too even when this takes place in the real world, bracing for the apocalypse. Something I'd never expect from a story supposed to be about a woman in tech and how her husband takes credit for her work. In short, it got weird. Good weird. Makes you think weird.

I loved the conversations this book wants us to have, specially in tech where we are all just robots and we all aim to automate and optimize everything. Their app reminds us to be human and to build communities. I'm not sure if it's making fun of tech or if it's dead serious, and I'm here for the author's creativity. Considering that at this point, every new tech is probably just a copy, the author still had fun ideas she incorporated throughout the story. I have never felt more boring working for banks and giant corporations. 🏦

The ending was perfect 👏🏼. For some reason I was shocked that it got here. I was not expecting to cry but I did. It went to a direction they knew from the start is a possibility. They became the very people they said they'll never be.

I kept on waiting for Cyrus to take credit for Asha's work but it was built in so slowly, I never notice it creeping in. It made you feel as crazy as Asha did, not knowing what to do. She allowed Cyrus to take over and it led to her being single'd out. It led to her silence.

I am the first person to complain about the unfairness for women in the workplace, but I also could not pinpoint the reasons. It is so subtle, so easy to dismiss, so easy to gaslit ourselves we're overreacting. It took me years to even acknowledge it for myself. Just like Asha Ray.


Full review here

Lucy

I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't get into it at all. I DNF'd at 50%.

Asha is fine, a little boring. And I'm not a huge fan of the writing style.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free digital ARC copy of this book. This is my honest review.

Stephanie Cox

I found this incredibly engaging, and not just because it hits some of my soft spots. There are parts early in the novel where I'd like to crawl in and live with the characters. But the pacing is uneven and the characters' development isn't fully fleshed out thought the novel. With the exception of the main character. I still swallowed it in just a few days.

Devin Mainville

Part satire, part social commentary on women in tech, The Startup Wife // Tahmima Anam asks the question: can a marriage survive creating a mega-successful business? But I really didn’t need to read this whole book to know the answer. 

The premise of this book hinges on the belief that the relationship between our main character - brilliant coder Asha Ray - and her flighty, spiritual husband Cyrus Jones was solid enough that it would take something as substantial as creating a religion replacing app with a cult like following to tear it apart. 

I never bought that premise. 

From the second Cyrus was introduced I found him insufferable and the novel never gave me any concrete reasons as to why Asha couldn’t see what I did. I found parts of it enjoyable and mildly amusing, but because I never got on board with what the book was doing so I never felt fully invested.

Christian Beck

I wanted to like this more; that’s the only reason I stuck through to the end. It wasn’t a bad book but, for me, the characters did not resonate at all. Her writing felt overly descriptive and lacked much emotion.

Other reviewers call this “satirical” but it didn’t feel that way at all. In fact, her description of building a startup was startlingly accurate–to the point that nothing really felt far-fetched. There were many moments where this book felt like a non-fiction business memoir. 

My rating is a reflection of my personal reaction to this book but it’s by no means poorly written or boring. It just lacked something for me.

The Startup Wife

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