Product Description

Still in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed man who is twenty years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English, and is forced to depend on her husband. But unlike him she is practical and wise, and befriends a fellow Asian girl Razia, who helps her understand the strange ways of her adopted new British home. Nazneen keeps in touch with her sister Hasina back in the village. But the rebellious Hasina has kicked against cultural tradition and run off in a 'love marriage' with the man of her dreams. When he suddenly turns violent, she is forced into the degrading job of garment girl in a cloth factory. Confined in her flat by tradition and family duty, Nazneen also sews furiously for a living, shut away with her buttons and linings - until the radical Karim steps unexpectedly into her life. On a background of racial conflict and tension, they embark on a love affair that forces Nazneen finally to take control of her fate. Strikingly imagined, gracious and funny, this novel is at once epic and intimate. Exploring the role of Fate in our lives - those who accept it; those who defy it - it traces the extraordinary transformation of an Asian girl, from cautious and shy to bold and dignified woman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4588 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Released on: 2004-04-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With its gritty Tower Hamlets setting, this sharply observed contemporary novel about the life of an Asian immigrant girl deals cogently with issues of love, cultural difference and the human spirit. The pre-publicity hype about Brick Lane was precisely the kind to set alarm bells ringing (we've heard it so often before), but, for once, the excitement is fully justified: Monica Ali's debut novel demonstrates that there is a new voice in modern fiction to be reckoned with.

Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with a man considerably older than her--a man whose expectations of life are so low that misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor: more able to deal with the ways of the world, and a better judge of the vagaries of human behaviour. She makes friends with another Asian girl, Razia, who is the conduit to her understanding of the unsettling ways of her new homeland.

This is a novel of genuine insight, with the kind of characterisation that reminds the reader at every turn just what the novel form is capable of. Every character (Nazneen, her disappointed husband and her resourceful friend Razia) is drawn with the complexity that can really only be found in the novel these days. In some ways, the reader is given the same all-encompassing experience as in a Dickens novel: humour and tragedy rub shoulders in a narrative that inexorably grips the reader. Whether or not Monica Ali can follow up this achievement is a question for the future; it's enough to say right now that Brick Lane is an essential read for anyone interested in current British fiction. --Barry Forshaw

Sunday Times
'Written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime'

Observer
'Brick Lane has everything: richly complex characters, a gripping story and it's funny too'

Customer Reviews

Hard work
Ever since its original publication and almost instantaneous shortlisting for various awards, Brick Lane has been on my "to get round to reading" list. From the rave reviews across the cover from all the papers, I thought it would be a sure-fire hit with me too. However, this wasn't the case.

Nazneen's story, at first glance, is highly intriguing - a Bangladeshi woman in an arranged marriage, shipped off to a husband she's never met in London. Initially this remains interesting, but that soon fades as the story unfolds painfully slowly, with little sense of direction. Like so many Booker nominees, Ali takes 5 pages to say something that could be conveyed in a single sentence. She seems incapable of writing directly, always using complicated symbols that the reader has to untangle, or otherwise be left with a text that always seems to be hinting at something just out of shot. Consequently the text often feels like nothing is happening at all, unless you try to read into every single word Ali writes: professional critics may love subtexts, but I certainly do not if it's the *only* interesting layer in the novel. Essentially, everything takes far too long to happen, and the novel feels suffocating as a result. Of course, this may be Ali's intention, to illustrate how Nazneen feels in her arranged life over which she has no control, but this doesn't make reading Brick Lane any easier.

Despite this, Ali has a gift for potraying strong characters who you feel could really exist. A great deal of empathy is felt for Nazneen, and her sister Hasina, whose tragic life in Bangladesh illustrates another path Nazneen might have taken if she had tried to buck the repressive system. Hasina is perhaps my favourite character in the book: she refuses to let life cow her, even through extreme poverty and prostitution. It's a little irritating that her poignant letters to Nazneen, through which we discover her story, are the weakest part of the text. They're supposed to read like the words of someone partially literate, but as another reviewer noted, mixing poor syntax with beautiful and insightful imagery just doesn't work. It sounds forced and reminds us it's Monica Ali writing and not Hasina, making the whole text feel a little contrived and artificial.

Brick Lane suffers most of all from being an obvious first novel, however much the critics are already calling Monica Ali a natural super-author. I'm not saying she can't write - not at all, she can write prose with the best of them - but she hasn't yet learned how to keep her writing down to the bare essentials. Far too much of the story is superfluous - the book is just too long, for no justifiable reason. It seems that Ali had so many ideas she wanted to put into her book that she was prepared to twist the plot this way and that to fit in everything that she wanted to say. The story suffers as a result, repeatedly losing momentum (and thus my interest) thanks to incidental scenes which serve only to make another point about the difficulties faced by a Bangladeshi woman in an arranged marriage abroad. It often feels like the story has been put on hold for the sake of another bullet-point on a big list of "issues" Ali had next to her keyboard.

So, that probably sounds all very negative - but that's unfair because this is still a good book. It is often insightful and enlightening, and occasionally it is wise and very enjoyable. However, it is not the masterpiece so many critics seem determined to make it out to be. I just want to add a little balance to their hyperbole: for the average reader like me who doesn't love books just because they use heaps of symbolism and metaphor, or are clever just for the sake of being clever (think: Martin Amis), Brick Lane is more heavy going than it should be. It is still a rewarding read, but definitely not an easy one.

Not overhyped
I just finished reading Brick Lane and found it enthralling. When reading I hope to learn something new in an entertaining way and this book definitely hit the mark. I found the way Nazneens new life in Britain is described through her eyes most illuminating. To be honest I never really thought about what it might mean to give up a life of hardship but well known and surrounded by family and friends to come to live in the Western World with its emphasis on individuality and privacy. When I see young women in traditional Muslim dress on the street I often wonder what goes on behind the veil, and even though Monica Ali surely does not speak for all of them she opened a window into an unknown world.

However, I have two criticisms. First, that Hasina's letters are written in broken English nearly drove me mad, especially in a section where there are nearly 30 pages of jumbled English to get through. Why Monica Ali chooses to write those letters in broken English I would love to know. As the recipient of the letters does not speak any English at the beginning of the novel this hardly makes sense - is it to convey the point that the young woman is barely literate in her native tongue?

My second criticism would be that the love story between Nazneen and Karim never manages to sound true. The motivation of neither her nor him to break with the strict religious code they both seem to uphold is never explained and Karim remains a one-dimensional character.

That being said I would still recommend this book strongly. It is a very entertaining and often funny read that manages to let you walk in somebody elses's shoes.

Disappointing
I was disappointed with this book. Brick Lane had the potential to be a good story, but it is overlong. There are far too many scenes and characters in the book than the plot justifies. In particular the letters from Hasina are almost unreadable and add very little to the book after the first few. It's a pity a lot of the chaff wasn't stripped out before Brick Lane was published, and it might have been a much better read.