TOO CLEVER BY HALF

From start-up culture to feminism, Tahmima Anam’s novel draws the right boxes. The only trouble is that it forgets to fill them in

- Tanushri Shukla

Three New Yorkers who have always felt like out-siders—Asha, the immigrant; Jules, the poor little rich boy; and Cyrus, the unemployed hippie spirit guide—end up becoming the founders of a million-dollar start-up. Asha is the coder and Jules is the business head, but it’s Cyrus with his enviable hair and smug memory for obscure religious rites who becomes the star and, later, the villain, of the start-up WAI (pronounced “why”, short for We are Infinite), an app that “anticipates people’s need for meaning and ritual”. Yup.

Tahmima Anam creates a fun parody of today’s tech startup culture in The Startup Wife, complete with exposed brick walls, an aversion for vowels (the characters eat at restaurants called “Pikl” and “Mylkist”), and “vegan superfoods” like “coffee hemp mylkshakes with extra CBD shots”—the clever hits just keep coming. How lovely then would it have been if the book had also made any kind of meaningful contribution to the conversation on consent, feminism, women in male-dominated professions and any of the other broad spectrum of complex issues it tries to cover. Unfortunately, it does little else apart from reaffirming what the reader likely already knows—that technology cannot save the world and that men will sometimes let you down.

THE STARTUP WIFE by Tahmima Anam HAMISH HAMILTON