There are many variations of the quote “behind every successful man is a woman”, if the original is not already maddening enough to you. Some amusing ones include “behind every successful man is a woman, behind every unsuccessful man there are two”, or “behind every successful man is a woman, behind that woman is his wife.”
They’re amusing enough if you can find it in you to chuckle at galling sexism. And for coder Asha Ray, the protagonist of The Startup Wife, humour and ridicule are some of her only defences in the misogynistic world of American high-tech.
“I mostly don’t hate drinking champagne and going to dinners where the interior decor consists of portraits of people who probably murdered my ancestors,” Asha remarks. “The reason I don’t hate it is because Cyrus and I have so much fun ridiculing everyone that it’s worth it just for the anthropology, and for the reminder that we share the same view of the world.”
When they inform their lawyer that they’re starting a business together, newly-weds Asha and Cyrus are immediately advised to get a post-nup. They scoff and find a new lawyer. Later, they realise they were not being singled out, “divorce after great success is simply a trend”.
There is a lot that Asha and Cyrus despise about the world they’ve plunged into, and many precautions they have taken to ensure they do not lose themselves within it. But even if, like me, you find yourselves rooting for them, the odds are heavily stacked against a heterosexual couple in a world where the woman is always two steps behind the man.
Starting from the end
The Startup Wife reads a little like a fairytale in reverse. The reader is introduced to Asha and her lifelong crush on Cyrus Jones – a boy described as a freak by one of their classmates for his strange but charismatic brand of intelligence. Instead of attending his final exams Cyrus submits a story without the letter “E” for AP Lit, makes a 3D diorama of the Battle of Algiers for European history class, and turns in a short film for Drama (ostensibly failing all his classes). Asha herself is clearly brilliant, albeit awkward; skipping two grades in her maths class to land herself a seat behind Cyrus.
Years later and their sparkling reunion is described in a way that quenches any romcom addict’s appetite. Asha is transformed – a self-assured MIT-educated coder brimming with ambition. “Of course he loves you back,” says her sister. “You morphed into a cross between Snow White and Iron Man.”
But when a book begins with our protagonist’s transformation story taking place within the first 20 pages and her teenage dreams of torrid romance fulfilled, the question is, where do we go from here? The answer is, of course, into the complications and gradual erosion of the happily ever after. Even if, like in a fairytale, you can predict the general direction the story will take, Tahmima Anam’s endearing characters and careful but engaging pace makes you want to stick with them to the very end for the details. And it is absolutely worth it to do so.
Utopia in the real world
Asha, Cyrus, and their best friend Jules join a tech startup incubator called Utopia with an idea for an app. Utopia, despite its name, seems to be at terms with the more apocalyptic reality of affairs – their mission is “to find solutions to the inevitable demise of the world as we know it”.
From an app called Spoken that filters emails to censor triggering or offensive language, to one called Obit.ly that manages a person’s various social media accounts after their death, none of the ideas is more than pleasantly outlandish because of how timely they are. “Dead people are going to outnumber living people on social media within ten years,” one of the committee members points out. Each company and its invention evoke a contemporary debate. For example, Consentify aims to make sexual encounters safer – but can regulating sex too much take away its thrill?
Anam manages to maintain a sharp, funny criticality of “wokeness” with greater nuance than dismissing it as snowflake culture. She also seems cognisant of how brands and companies utilise political correctness purely for their own ends, while engaging with it in only superficial ways. Woke VC, for example, is a premier league fund targeting diversity; five percent of their funding goes to minority women. Or at least that’s the target – it is at that moment, at one point five percent. “That sounds cutting edge,” says Asha, trying to maintain a straight face.
Religion in the modern day
However, not everyone’s efforts to improve the world are superficial. Most of Utopia’s board members champion deeply personal causes. For Asha, the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, it is a need for community outside organised religion that spurs her invention. Like for the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this novel also depicts the thorny relationship that immigrants or children of immigrants can have to religion.
Despite the immense negative effects it can have, can religion be dismissed entirely? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, can everything valuable about religion be salvaged while expunging its failings?
When Asha meets Cyrus as an adult, he is conducting rituals for people – from marriages to funerals to baptisms. His vast expanse of encyclopaedia-like knowledge permits him to draw from different religions, cultures, films and books, to tailor a ritual designed for its user. Asha, inspired and also smitten by his brain, designs an algorithm mimicking the workings of his mind. Thus, WAI is born, a social media platform to connect likeminded people through these ceremonies.
Viking death rituals, a Wonder Woman prayer circle in Madras, a Bhagavad Gita recital group in Dallas. Greta Thunberg, Margaret Atwood, Malala Yousafzai – these become the central figures and icons to WAI users. “They do not want to try the latest skin-firming cream, they are not interested in celebrity gossip. They do not bow to influencers because we don’t give them any. They are the curious, the wondering and wandering, hungering for connection, searching for meaning. They are the best of us. And we give them a place to be those people.”
Asha, Cyrus and Jules celebrate the formation of their company by creating a manifesto which includes the pledge that they will not “sell their souls”. Behind many of these companies are an earnest effort to make sense of the new world.
A subversive (and incredibly funny) tone
Asha, our narrator, is a coder. She is not a poet or philosopher. Her tone is one of witty clarity and straightforwardness. If the story were written by her husband, Cyrus, perhaps it would be of more meandering lyricism. This works for the book in several ways.
One is by creating a subtle subversion of gender roles. In many ways, Asha is the head of the company and Cyrus is the heart. It is Cyrus who is tugged and sometimes eclipsed by his emotion. Asha, despite being the brain of the company and the voice of reason, is written off (because, of course, being a woman negates her other attributes).
Although our story is set amidst Utopia’s “band of merry Doomsayers” it is not trying to answer loftier questions about life and death so much as it is observing things through Asha’s wry, level gaze. Yes, Asha has to deal with the baggage of being the daughter of immigrants – but in many ways she is one of the most objective, clearsighted members of Utopia. She loves doing her work, and is devoted to it more than anything else.
Anam leaves a lot unanswered; a lot of uncomfortable themes floating in the air. Yet this feels acceptable, as it was never Asha’s job to be this generation’s messiah. That responsibility landed on Cyrus (with its own set of consequences). Asha has her own job, one which she does excellently – and finds herself being spoken over and sidelined nonetheless.
The Startup Wife leaves you with a lot to chew over, perhaps raising more questions than it answers. It is very difficult to explain just how clever this book is without giving too much away – my recommendation would be for everyone to read it and then to contact me; for the joy of dissecting it in the days after.
The Startup Wife, Tahmima Anam, Hamish Hamilton.