Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir

Farah Naz Rishi, a Pakistani American, expects her first year of college to be quiet, and it is. She is there to study and to learn to stand on her own, and a recent breakup has ended her mother's hopes of an early marriage for her. She does not expect an ideal man to turn up, and she does not think of life as a love story.

Then she meets Stephen, a Jamaican student with an easy smile and a relaxed manner. There is no spark at first sight. Her mother would never accept him as a husband. Even so, the two share a bond neither of them can explain.

This is a memoir that covers thirteen years. Over that time Farah faces a series of tragedies and the grief that follows, while she works out where she belongs. Stephen stays beside her as confidant, supporter and closest friend, and the book asks what happens if that friendship turns into something else and risks the good thing they have.

The narrative follows family tensions, a friendship that grows slowly, and love in several forms: between relatives, between friends and between partners. It is told in the first person, with a reflective tone and a long, unhurried arc, and it deals with real loss alongside the warmth of the relationship at its centre.