Brick Lane

Rating:
Summary: Well written debut
Review: Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" is an excellent debut novel that captures the struggles, the cultural clash, and the frustrations of a family caught between two worlds.

From the day of her birth, Nazneen is reminded how she is a puppet of fate. She dutifully leaves her small Bangladeshi village and goes to live in Brick Lane, the Bengali enclave of London, after her arranged marriage to Chanu, an educated but pompous and ineffectual man twice her age. She acts as a traditional, dutiful, and useful wife. After accepting whatever cards fate deals her, however, she casts a critical eye at the actions of her friends, her sister and her mother. She questions whether she can actually control her life. She starts to break free, first with small subtle acts of rebellion and then an affair. Finally, with the interests of her children in mind, she takes a giant step toward becoming her own woman. Interspersed throughout the story line are letters to Nazneen from her sister Hasina, who strikes out on her own in Bangladesh and, through good times and bad, forges a life of her own.

The writing style is colorful and descriptive. The reader can smell the spices wafting through the hallways, view the multicultural clutter of a shabby and overcrowded apartment, and share the confusion and outrage that simmer in Brick Lane due to cultural, religious, and racial prejudice. Each character is carefully crafted and brought to life. Ali peels back the surface layers of Chanu to reveal his inner doubts and disallusionment. The secondary characters such as the starchy Dr. Azad, the crafty hypochondriac Mrs. Islam, and the Britishized Razia, are depicted with a deft touch. There are only two points in the novel that could be improved upon. First, although the absent Hasina's letters add another dimension to the story by developing her personality and experiences, at one point they lead the reader off on a several year tangent that leaves a gap in Nazneen's time-line. Second, there are many ethnic words for food and clothing that are not explained, and these might cause the reader some confusion. Overall, however, this book is a seamless blend of the Old Country and the New, and it brings new insights to the immigrant experience.

Rating:
Summary: Total Immersion Experience
Review: Monica Ali appears to be telling a story about what she knows best in her novel, Brick Lane. Monica Ali was born in Bangladesh and grew up in London. Most of us do not have a background knowledge of Bangladesh, and this book gives us insight into that land and culture.

Nanzeen at age 18, is sent to London to marry a man twice her age, a Bangladesh born man, Chanu. For Nanzeen this is a way to escape this land that has not much to offer. She accepts this arrangement, as she has accepted much of her life, "what could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne." She settles into her marriage with Chanu. Chanu is a man who is not happy with much, and whose perception is that he is always being overlooked a racist thing he expects. He goes from job to job, never really accepting his lot in life. His friendship with Dr Azad is one of his most interesting relationships in the book.

Nanzeen moves willingly into her marriage, and the birth of her
son. A heartbreaking, sudden illness and then death, not fully explained. Nanzeen has two more children, both girls. They are beloved by both parents and are brought up with both cultures. We can see the girls trying to break free from the "old world" and move into their real life. Their parents can see this also, and try to turn them around.

Nanzeen has a sister, Hasina, who stays in Bangladesh. Through their letters, we can see Hasina's love marriage to an abusive man. She flees this marriage and goes to Dhaka. The years and her escapades move on, and the adversity that Hasina braves is reflected in her letters. She is a loving and faithful sister, and they remain close through their letters.

Nanzeen falls in love with a young man in the community, and through this relationship Nanzeen awakens and starts to flourish. We can see the change in Nanzeen, and she is transformed into a young woman who can make her own decisions.

Nanzeen and her husband, Chanu are marvelous cooks. The descriptions of the preparation of their meals with the spices and ingredients from their world permeate this book. The food is colorful and many decisions are made with Nanzeen eating from plastic containers by the kitchen sink. The spices and flavors of this world bring to mind many wonderful curries and Indian foods. Colorful saris and cloths and pictures bring to us a culture we have read about, and are now beginning to understand.

The decisions made by Chanu and Nanzeen bring their family to a brink. We are allowed into the politics of this culture in London. We hear how events in the United States play in their life. We see that the more mature Nanzeen makes mature decisions that allow her children to lead the life that they want. This is the kind of book that you do not want to end. I want to know more, I want to know what happens next. The book ends with a hint of promise.. enjoy. prisrob

Rating:
Summary: What A Marvelous book!
Review: Readers of this book will not be disappointed with their time invested in this wonderful and poignant story of an arranged Bengali marriage and her life in the projects of London. The story is not writ large but a personal story told through the passage of years as Nazneen,the Bengali bride, learns the ways of her new husband, who is under employed and seemingly adrift in a society he does not enjoy. His fantasy life about his station in life causes friction between him and his wife. The story is charming and poignant. The author has done a brilliant job bringing this family to life.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly well-written
Review: This book tells of the growth of a simple uneducated Bengali bride of an arranged marriage, thrown into the a confusing and alien culture of London. She is married to a pompous know-all failure of a man. As time goes by in this novel you see this shy, unsure woman learn and grow and become a person in her own right. This story is about the triumph of spirit of women, family love and commitment.

Rating:
Summary: Well written debut
Review: Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" is an excellent debut novel that captures the struggles, the cultural clash, and the frustrations of a family caught between two worlds.

From the day of her birth, Nazneen is reminded how she is a puppet of fate. She dutifully leaves her small Bangladeshi village and goes to live in Brick Lane, the Bengali enclave of London, after her arranged marriage to Chanu, an educated but pompous and ineffectual man twice her age. She acts as a traditional, dutiful, and useful wife. After accepting whatever cards fate deals her, however, she casts a critical eye at the actions of her friends, her sister and her mother. She questions whether she can actually control her life. She starts to break free, first with small subtle acts of rebellion and then an affair. Finally, with the interests of her children in mind, she takes a giant step toward becoming her own woman. Interspersed throughout the story line are letters to Nazneen from her sister Hasina, who strikes out on her own in Bangladesh and, through good times and bad, forges a life of her own.

The writing style is colorful and descriptive. The reader can smell the spices wafting through the hallways, view the multicultural clutter of a shabby and overcrowded apartment, and share the confusion and outrage that simmer in Brick Lane due to cultural, religious, and racial prejudice. Each character is carefully crafted and brought to life. Ali peels back the surface layers of Chanu to reveal his inner doubts and disallusionment. The secondary characters such as the starchy Dr. Azad, the crafty hypochondriac Mrs. Islam, and the Britishized Razia, are depicted with a deft touch. There are only two points in the novel that could be improved upon. First, although the absent Hasina's letters add another dimension to the story by developing her personality and experiences, at one point they lead the reader off on a several year tangent that leaves a gap in Nazneen's time-line. Second, there are many ethnic words for food and clothing that are not explained, and these might cause the reader some confusion. Overall, however, this book is a seamless blend of the Old Country and the New, and it brings new insights to the immigrant experience.

Rating:
Summary: an amazingly REAL novel
Review: It is utterly amazing to think that the world of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi-Muslim woman married to the foolish but kind Chanu, is set in the same city that Bridget Jones and all those scatteredbrain "ha ha hee hee" wannabes inhabit. But the same city limits contain many different worlds, like the world of Brick Lane.

Nazneen was ostensibly born a stillborn but "left to her Fate", as her long-deceased mother would tell her, she rose like a phoenix and lived to be an adult. Nazneen's beautiful sister Hasina ran off for a love-marriage years ago and though she immigrated to London, they keep in touch by letter.

On the estate that contains Brick Lane, Nazneen meets friends and enemies and even starts an affair with a boy whose worldview of Islam and how Muslims suffer around the world opens her eyes to the world beyond herself and her daughters and husband.

Nazneen is all for letting Fate decide, but as the world pre- and post-September 11th swirls around her, she wonders if not choosing her course is possibly the worst decision she can make. But how can she do anything else? However, although her behavior patterns show Nazneen to be passive, she also grows in her inner strength which might help all of them out in the end. You can only read it to find out which path she ultimately takes.

Rating:
Summary: The Strength of the Human Heart
Review: The Strength of the Human Heart: Book Review of Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Scribner, 2003

This runaway British bestseller details the live of Nazeen, young Bengali woman transported to London as an arranged marriage nuptial.

Nazeen makes this book happen. She leads a host of supporting characters through daily life in their little slice of London life. Fleshing out the ranks behind her are: Razia, over-weight and self-absorbed; Chanu, the over-bearing bumpkin of a husband; Shahana, the shin-kicking teenage daughter, the brat whose neck you want to wring; Bibi, the loving, adoring and eager-to-please younger daughter; Hasina, the letter writing sister, and anchoring voice from her former home, Dhaka, Bengladesh; Ms. Islam, the stingy, hypochondriacal loanshark; Dr. Azad the learned doctor and unloved husband; Karim, the morally-upright, yet lustful, responsible yet irresponsible, handsome, virile, and available lover ...the list goes on. These characters spring to life in all of their various stages of non-linear, unpredictable complexity.

Through Nazeen's life, the reader gains access into London's Brick Lane where Bengalees has been transported. They are immigrants seeking the "better life". Their arrival is accompanied by cultural confusion and breakdown of traditional values. Their families are bombarded with drugs and other vicissitudes but in the end they learn the new ways, integrate new values into their lives and transform their identities.

As readers, we learn about the rural Bengaldesh of Nazeen's memory. She frequently returns to the land of her childhood, in dreams in fantasies, and in recollections, in her desire for things known. We are also shown the modern state of Bengaladesh as Chanu delivers sermons to his captive daughters and wife. We are driven into an English-Bengali life to then look out at white English people. Nazeen's unassuming anxiety about cultural clues gave me, a non-Bengali reader, insight into my own culture and cultural assumptions without having to travel to another land. It is unlikely that, even if I travelled to London or Dhaka, that I would have been privy to this life.

"But they were not aware of her. In the next instant she knew it. They could not see her any more than she could see God. They knew that she existed (just as she knew that He existed) but unless she did something, waved a gun, halted the traffic, they would not see her. She enjoyed this thought. She began to scrutinize. She stared at the long, thin faces, the pointy chins. The women had strange hair. It puffed up around their heads, pumped up like a snake's hood. They pressed their lips together and narrowed their eyes as though they were angry at something they had heard, or at the wind for messing their hair."

Our heroine is a woman that doesn't seem to know herself, just loves whom she loves, goes where she is sent, cooks what is expected that she cook. She changes, sometimes slowly, unassumingly and sometimes, rapidly and unexpectedly. She comes alive in her indecision, in her faith, in her lust, and in her confusion.

"Nazeen could not concentrate on her sewing. She watched the back of Karim's head, the strong lines his neck made. If she were to describe him to Hasina, what would she say?
That even when you knew you had not, you could end up believing you had said something that might change his life....She would say that he knew so many things. ...Chanu also knew many things but they only left him bewildered. If knowledge was food then while Karim grew strong on his intake, Chanu become only bloated, bilious, and pained. The made Karim made you feel was..."

She struggles with her faith, she is flawed, she has doen peculiar, idiosyncratic. For example, she has passed many hours in the night, standing at the kitchen counter eating, after her family is in bed; a thinking/non-thinking."For her, there was nothing else to be done. Nothing else that God wanted her to do. Sometimes she wanted to get up and run. Most of the time she did not want to run, but neither did she want to sit still. How difficult it was, this business of sitting still. But there was nothing really to complain of. There was Chanu, who was kind and never beat her. There was Raqib. And there was this shapeless, nameless thing that crawled across her shoulders and nested in her hair and poisoned her lungs, that made her both restless and listless."

This life goes-on-type of story lends strength to the human heart through the perseverance of the characters while holding the readers attention with like a spicy, aromatic, well-prepared dinner that will keep you reading through the night. The ending left me with the feeling of having gained more understanding about what it is to be human.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: This book was not at all what I expected--a good thing. While I tend to go for novels set in dramatic and/or exotic places (think Martel's "Life of Pi" or McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood," I was hesitant about choosing "Brick Lane."

But my fears were for nothing, for this is a very good novel, telling the struggles of an Islamic community both pre and post 9/11. The characters are carefully drawn and the settings are real and atmospheric.

Also recommended: Life of Pi, and Bark of the Dogwood

Rating:
Summary: The words just don't dance
Review: After all I had heard about this book, I was greatly looking forward to cracking the spine. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in it. It was nicely written in places and I was happy for Nanzeen's final choice but, for the most part, I was ready for the next book by the time I was half way through.

The characters had so much potential but remained flat and inanimate throughout. There were so many times when they could have sprung to life but did not. The ending seemed a bit false to me - all of a sudden, Nanzeen has the courage to stand up to her husband? Her image as a meek woman through much of the book did not match up with the woman having an affair with a younger man. I also think Ali wrapped up that affair too neatly. Where was the pain, the torment, anything to show that the affair was worth something to either participant?

It was a nice read but I much prefer a book that I can immerse myself in at least one angle - the story line, the characters, the setting, anything. That just did not happen in this book.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: Not much depth to it but the story line was good. First book I've ever read about Bangledesh so I found it interesting culturally speaking. I won't describe it as exotic, that's too patronizing. The descriptions of food made me hungry.