The corner shop is not a place of grand narratives. "Reserved for the purchase of emergency milk and Rizlas", it offers neither the drama of a supermarket nor the space for many characters. Yet it is an institution at the heart of British life, a lone outpost of commerce embedded within rows of net-curtained terraced houses, and thus a fitting prism through which to see the country. With "Marriage Material" Sathnam Sanghera, a business journalist formerly with the Financial Times and a second-generation migrant, uses a shop to consider both sweeping economic trends and the intimate ecosystem of shop life. Like Arnold Bennett's 1908 "The Old Wives' Tale" (upon which it is closely modelled), this novel tells the story of two sisters at the centre of three generations of shopkeepers.
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