Tahmima Anam - The Startup Wife
4 ⭐
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Science, Technology, Feminism
Pages: 296
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Canongate Books
Date Published: 3rd June 2021
Massive thanks to Canongate Books for a copy of the book and for the invitation to join Canongate's June 2022 Readalong!
Book Blurb:
A quirky, funny, deeply intelligent story of love, big dreams, starting up and feminist geekdom
Halfway through her PhD and already dreaming of running her own lab, computer scientist Asha has her future all mapped out. Then a chance meeting and whirlwind romance with her old high-school crush, Cyrus, changes everything.
Dreaming big, together with their friend Jules they come up with a revolutionary idea: to build a social networking app that could bring meaning to millions of lives. While Asha creates an ingenious algorithm, Cyrus' charismatic appeal throws him into the spotlight.
When the app explodes into the next big thing, Asha should be happy, shouldn't she? But why does she feel invisible in the boardroom of her own company? Why are decisions being made without her? Gripping, witty and razor-sharp, The Startup Wife is a blistering novel about big ambitions, speaking out and standing up for what you believe in.
My Review:
The book begins with Asha Ray who
meets her high school crush Cyrus Jones later in life whilst completing her PhD.
They fall in love instantly and get married within a couple of months of
reuniting. Whilst they start their married life, Asha notices that Cyrus has
this aura, this book of knowledge about religions and can bring a sense of
community and belonging to anyone he speaks to. People from different kinds of
life love him and accept him. This gives her an idea to use the knowledge that
Cyrus has and create a social media platform where people can build their communities
based on what they believe in so they can feel like they belong somewhere. On
this social media app, they can request rituals based on different religions
and people’s lifestyles, which then connect them to like-minded people all over
the world. All with the power of AI and the knowledge that Cyrus poses. That’s how
WAI is born. Book then follows both, the creation of WAI and Asha’s relationship
with Cyrus, whilst covering how everything starts to crumble after Cyrus wants
more and more power and is branded as The Messiah by millions of people.
My favourite part of this book
was the power relationship between Cyrus and Asha. She believes that nothing
will come in between their love and marriage, because they are soulmates. However,
once Cyrus tasted the power and fame, he starts to completely ignore Asha and
her input for the platform. He wants to do it his way, thus when Asha stands up
to him, as a CEO he just fires her from the board and replaces her. For me,
that was so interesting as Asha didn’t see that as a big issue, since she loves
Cyrus so much. She then thinks that maybe she was wrong to stand up to him and
challenge him, even though she is the brains of the WAI. She is the one who
created the platform, she was the one who encouraged Cyrus (who didn’t want to)
to become a CEO and she was the one who came up with the idea in the first
place. Yet, she is the one who doesn’t get any credit, although is usually
right about things.
I also liked how gender and race are
explored in this book. How Asha with her idea of WAI didn’t get any funding
from big corporations but once Cyrus stepped in as CEO, he straight away got
people interested in funding WAI. There are many other examples in the book,
where female tech start-ups are less favoured than start-ups created by males.
Some bits of the book was too slow
for me, especially how they got the WAI going. I think it was way too long spent
on that when Asha’s and Cyrus' relationship could’ve been explored in more
depth. I felt that some bits of their relationship was covered too quickly so as
well as, so all of the things that happened at the end of this book were so abrupt.
I couldn’t connect with Cyrus'
character at all and at times his character just plainly annoyed me, whereas I
loved Asha’s character. I have to admit, her character did annoy me a few times
but only because she kept putting herself down thinking that because she loves
Cyrus, whatever he does is ok. Up until the very end of the book, she does not challenge
him. At times it was so hard to read as she is such a smart and intelligent
woman who created a platform out of nowhere but doesn’t get any credit at all,
whilst her husband waltzes into fame. Asha’s character grew so much over the
book, whereas Cyrus’s character became more selfish and egocentric. She became stronger
and realised that she is just as worthy as her husband.
Overall: It was a really
interesting and great read. It wasn’t my favourite but only because at parts it
was too slow for me and also there was so much tech/nerdiness going on instead
of character exploration, which is something that I wanted to see more in this book.
However, this book is very well written and covers very
important topics, such as the power of AI, the power of religion and faith,
feminism, race and gender, the power of relationships, etc. I recommend reading it
if you are interested in technology, start-ups, gender and race as well as feminism.
About the Author:
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