Selected Book
Brick Lane
- Audio Cassette
- Edition: Abridged
- Author: Monica Ali
- Publisher: Highbridge Audio
- Release Date: September 2003
- ISBN-10: 1565118286
- ISBN-13: 9781565118287
- List Price: $36.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryWildly embraced by critics, readers, and contest judges (who put it on the short-list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize), Brick Lane is indeed a rare find: a book that lives up to its hype. Monica Ali's debut novel chronicles the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi girl so sickly at birth that the midwife at first declares her stillborn. At 18 her parents arrange a marriage to Chanu, a Bengali immigrant living in England. Although Chanu--who's twice Nazneen's age--turns out to be a foolish blowhard who "had a face like a frog," Nazneen accepts her fate, which seems to be the main life lesson taught by the women in her family. "If God wanted us to ask questions," her mother tells her, "he would have made us men." Over the next decade-and-a-half Nazneen grows into a strong, confident woman who doesn't defy fate so much as bend it to her will. The great delight to be had in Brick Lane lies with Ali's characters, from Chanu the kindly fool to Mrs. Islam the elderly loan shark to Karim the political rabblerouser, all living in a hothouse of Bengali immigrants. Brick Lane combines the wide scope of a social novel about the struggles of Islamic immigrants in pre- and post-9/11 England with the intimate story of Nazneen, one of the more memorable heroines to come along in a long time. If Dickens or Trollope were loosed upon contemporary London, this is exactly the sort of novel they would cook up. --Claire Dederer |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Aims high, but falls well short
Rating:
A review should always try to address its subject in its own terms. The purpose, after all, is many-sided, to summarise, paraphrase, contextualise, all with the express intention of informing a potentially interested participant of the nature of the experience on offer. Any proffered review that merely says I did or did not like it is thus entirely specious, since it conveys nothing of the work in focus, only the doubly-uninterpretable reaction of a dismembered, effectively anonymous opinion.
So in the case of Brick Lane by Monica Ali a dutiful list of the elements must begin with the setting. For the majority non-Londoners, Brick Lane is a market street in East London. It is just up the road from the eastern fringes of the City of London, the financial centre that boasts gleaming towers and vast wealth. (Or perhaps it once did!)
But over the years Brick Lane has been a magnet for new migrants, communities marginalised by both origin and destination. It has also been a centre for political action of all shades. The current occupants of this social clearing house are Bangladeshis and the street, in particular, has become a centre for Bangladeshi culture and food.
So, at the centre of Monica Ali's novel is a Bangladeshi woman, Nazneen, who arrives in Britain to meet her husband, Chanu, an apparently slobbering slob, imbued with more social manners than domestic. But arrangement suffices, as Nazneen learns to cope with married life in a foreign place in which she has no ties and little communication.
Nazneen's experience in London's Brick Lane is juxtaposed via an exchange of letters with the parallel experience of Hasina, her sister in Bangladesh. The two women's experiences eventually diverge as local pressures demand decision and action.
The contrasts, along with the considered tensions between white working class racism and Muslim identity promotion in east London ought to provide a powerful vehicle with which to explore worlds of culture, experience, relationships and ideology. Brick Lane, unfortunately, falls short of every destination. Unfortunately again, the characters are weak, the artifice feels false, the vibrant location is portrayed as dull and the passions of ideological difference are confused and politically limp or naive.
Brick Lane was an ambitious project, but it began confused and lost direction as it progressed. It does have its moments, but its hours are long, and not a little tedious.
Enlightening Passages
Rating:
"Brick Lane" was a great read----it helps to have lived in the UK and to have met and known people similar to the characters in Monica Ali's book. Her colorful, descriptive style of writing really opens the mind to the world that she presented---we get more than a glimpse, we get the whole story.
A promising debut that does not live upto the hype
Rating:
Brick Lane is a promising debut that deals with a woman, Nazneen, who is raised up with the mentality that she cant change her fate. Married off to another Bengali, Chanu in London, she assumes a servile role in her matrimonial home. While the novel itself shows potential since it addresses the possibility of changing our destiny, the tome is sometimes marred by belabored and unnecessary writing/descriptions. For instance, the first page, about the mother preparing a chicken is way too descriptive and repititive. Then, the unintelligible letters sent to Nazneen by her sister, Hasina is hard to even comprehend what the story is all about. I mean, if they were mistakes here and there, that could be tolerable but forcing oneself to gain an insight on the sister's predicament/challenges back home was very hard and not worth immersing myself into. There are a whole lot of characters in the novel that you cant even figure out who is who in the novel. So, while the novel itself comes up with an interesting subject line,(is it possible to change one's destiny) it does not live upto the hype accorded it. For once, I cant see how it was 'wildly embraced by critics'... when it was monotonous to read the same thing over and over again.
Worth starting
Rating:
Brick Lane begins well. The characters are wittily drawn -- the protagonist's husband, Chanu, wouldn't be out of place in Dickens (and I'm afraid he'd take that as a compliment, poor fool). The structure is promising - the protagonist in London and her sister back home in Bangladesh tell their stories in counterpoint. We see how poverty and culture constrain their choices. Their lives unfold in a series of carefully explored scenes, from which we can infer the years between. *SPOILER ALERT* But then, alas, the second half of the book drifts off into all the cliches of chick lit. The female protagonist has an affair - of course - with a handsome young stranger - and uncovers an ill-concealed family skeleton - I'm sure you can guess, it's always either suicide or sexual abuse isn't it? - and finds empowerment, and sisterhood, and sexual self-determinism, blah blah blah. The really interesting issues raised in the first half of the book - acculturation, labor economics, the development of love in an arranged marriage - are just dropped without resolution.
Not the real thing
Rating:
I did find this book intriuging enough to read it all in one go,which is quite an achivement considering it's size.
Unfortunately it did leave a somewhat of a bitter after taste.To use an analogy from the book itself,it was a bit like going to a Bangladeshi restaraunt pretending to be an Indian one(replete with Hindu statues that the propieters secretly disdain)
Ultimately i just couldnt escape the impression that it was more than just a bit phoney and designed specifically to cater to the imaginations of tourist, in this case, of the literary variety.
The book started off well for me assuming the voice of the doomed ,but dignified asian woman in suffering that was familiar from the pen of some great writers such as Amy tan,Jung Chan (wild Swans)Xinran (good women of china) et al.
I didnt consider this immediately as derivative as a part of me really wanted to like this book and the Setting was a new and exiting one in literature,the Mysterious Brick lane In Londons East End.Besides i thought, this was a voice that would serve the Bangladeshi womens experince quite well.
After finishing the book though ,and doing some research folllowing up my suspicions about the author ,it strikes me now as being very formulaic and calculating.
Although i frequented the heart of Brick Lane quite often in the early 90's,you dont need to have been to that area or lived there to pick up its lack of Authenticity .Any asian person with a traditional upbringing will tell you that no asian person ,let alone a village bumpkin like the books Heroine Nazneen, would think of her self and her life in a way that is described in this book.The charecter did not speak for herself,it was a voice imposed upon her by an outsider,a middle class,comofartable Oxford educated outsider,who has never lived anywhere remotely resembling Brick Lane.
It felt really infuriating having this village woman explained away through the sophisticated literary contrivances of an oppurtunist.You wanted to hear how Nazreen really felt. This book does not give women a voice as it purports,it takes it away. At the end i was fuming!!
The overall effect of this book is absurdity,it is writing in a voice that the person who is supposed to be being written about would not recognise themselves!
Tower Hamlets and Brick lane has many many stories to tell.A true tale of the underbelly of this area would in reality be much more tragic and heartbreaking (but ultimately much more human) than this.I hope somebody delivers a novel of the quality this part of London really deserves.
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