Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great
Review: Not as much fun as White Teeth and not as deep as Midnight's Children. I did enjoy reading Monica Ali's much hyped new novel, but really felt it a quite light, entertaining novel that was let down by lapses into cliche. I think there is a curious situation with books that refer to a specific community and are written by someone who comes from that community - the voice is taken to be very authentic and that allows them to draw upon a pool of 2-dimensional characters that an outsider would not necessarily get away with. I thought the novel was well paced and well written, but I did feel frustrated by the gallery of characters - the rebellious friend, the hypocritical maintainer of old-style values (who is a Usurer), the not-good, not-bad sad husband, the down-trodden doctor, the sexy revolutionary. I felt I had met them all before in a myriad of other novels. I do however think that Nazneen is an immensely likeable heroine and she did live for me. More than that Ali should be commended for dealing with the impact of 9/11 on the Muslim community so directly. I'm sure Ali will develop and grow as a writer and there a signs of something very good here - but she's not there yet.
Rating: 
Summary: underwhelming
Review: I loved the idea of this book and was very open to it being as good as the hype, but it's not. To start with, the characters are too black and white, and not well drawn. Some characters don't even have names, they're a category: "The Questioner" and so forth. The characters that do have names are given characteristics much more that features. Chanu, the husband, is a pompous gasbag in the way that only the men of patriarchal cultures can be. He is a castles-in-the-air-type of person, and we read over and over about the selfish things he does, how he lords over and oppresses his wife and two daughers, how fat and revolting he is physically. His wife, Nazneen, married off by her father is virtuous, thoughtful, pious and not only runs the household, but ends up supporting her family with sewing piece-work. This book is LOOOOOOOONGGG, at least a hundred pages too long, and not in the good way. It's long in the way that has you skimming over pages, especially the ones about the Muslim group forming, losing your place and not caring, and basically just trying to get through it. After all that work, the denoument doesn't satisfy -- one can't believe that characters that have been shown to act one way (over and over and over) would suddenly start acting otherwise so the book could have the endig it did. Skip it.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull and duller
Review: This book keeps your interest for the about the first 50 pages and then just disintegrates to the point where you just don't care about the characters. It was downright muddled, at times.
It was all I could do to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Talented author but the book's ultimately unsatisfying
Review: Life in Brick Lane is captured with an uncanny, almost photographic realism. And the story of Nanzeen and Chanu's life together rings true. Yet the pace is maddeningly slow and the plot disintegrates into predictability. That said, I believe that Monica Ali is a writer who has been blessed with great talent. Unfortunately, Brick Lane is not a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: Don't get what all the fuss is about
Review: I honestly don't get it. As another reviewer suggested, this writer is just the luckiest girl alive....she's riding a hot wave of interest in ethnic fiction, and the Bangladesh/London setting is what must have sold this book. It can't be the writing. This is one of the most painfully boring and slow moving stories that I have read. The opening is quite good, but from there it just fizzles. We know far too much of her old husband Chandu and his weird habit of playing with his stomach. She repeats things endlessly in this book. The letters from the sister are also painful to read, and as someone else mentioned for some unknown reason they are in broken english, which makes zero sense. The letter would have been written in their native tongue, and unless the sister has dyslexia or is completely illiterate, it just make no sense to have her writing be so bad.This book is just so easy to put down. It amazes me that for all the really good books out there, this one is garnering so much unwarranted attention.
Rating:
Summary: dishonest trash
Review: I really regret having bought and having read this book. The first few pages seem to start off well, with the birth of the main character Nazeen. Appearing to be a still born she somehow comes back to life after which her parents decide that she should not be taken hospital but instead be Left To Her Fate. This of course becomes the central theme of the book, how she struggles with taking action or being passive in her life. At first the book's start impressed me, but after a while it dawned on me she stole this idea from Rushdie, who often has a very dramatic event occur within the first few pages that becomes symbolic for events thereafter. But Rushdie doesn't beat the symbolism to death! He leaves it there for you to discover. In Brick Lane literally hundreds of times we are reminded that Nazeen was Left To Her Fate. So even this apparently good (although plagiarized) opening is spoiled. The rest of the book is basically just drivel, with the exception of one decent passage while Nazeen son is in the hospital. I've read books with 1 dimensional characters, but as I read this book I was wondering if it was possible to have 0 dimensional characters and events? Characters so lacking they suck out your personality as you read? The end of the book is just a nose dive into abysmal. It's so bad its offensive. Nazeen leaves her apartment to go looking for her daughter and spots a young girl somewhere and remarks, "Nazeen had learned to recognize the face of a refugee child that traumatized stillness, the need they have to learn to play again". Not only is this overly sentimental, up until this point there had been no mention of refugees or the struggles of refugees. What offends me here is that this book does not handle any big issues (racism, poverty, refugees,..) it co-opts them, and it rubs me the wrong way just the same way that those Shell Oil commercials claiming they care about the environment did. Even the title, Brick Lane, which is a trendy ethnic area in London, feels dishonest to me. Brick Lane would be a great title for a book about poverty, ghettos and gentrification; of course nothing that real is ever mentioned. If you want to read trash then at least read honest trash, this book is trash and dishonest.
Rating:
Summary: why abridge an excellent book and reading
Review: this reading is excellent..save that it is abridged..why oh why?..monetary reasons i presume. certainly they are not "improving" the novel. a shame really, but still the reading is well done and brings the characters to life.
Rating: 
Summary: Brick Lane
Review: Read this book! While it is not the "book of the century", it is a good reading.
It is not necessary to dissect every character or situation; concentrate on small details that are some times perfect, almost visual (Nazneen in the butcher shop). Also I cannot get rid of the idea that some of the negative critics are due to the fact that we don't find the stereotype figures and situations in this book. Neither Nazneen nor her husband is what we accept of a "Muslim couple" in London. Whether these figures are credible -- I don't know, but I am sure we would not complain if Chanu were beating up his wife daily; if their daughters were hiding behind the veil, and if Nazneen were destroyed physically or mentally by her domestic chores. (Which she is not.) That would meet our worldview. Or maybe some of us didn't like Nazneen's friend Karim saying after 911: "I can tell you--no Arab nation benefits. No Muslim anywhere in the world. We are the ones who're going to suffer. You got to ask, who benefits?"
However, I really disliked the ending; not giving out any clue: it is pathetic. Skip the last two pages then you will have a good enjoyable lot better than average book.
Rating:
Summary: Blah and Such Awful Writing
Review: I have to seriously wonder in this day of ubiquitous books by the South Asian diaspora, what makes a novel wrestle and rise to the top? What makes an author garner the distinction of Granta? What makes a book the topic of literary and popular conversations? Surely, it can't be a pretty author photograph on the back of a book jacket. Nor can it merely be the author's point of origin, and now chosen place of residence. Please restore my faith in the idea that a book's sole merit lies in the quality of the writing, and in the writing alone. Brick Lane fails on this most crucial level. The novel lacks any complexity or development. Initially, I was curious to read about the Bangladeshi immigrant experience because the subject matter is relatively new to South Asian immigrant writing. I was sorely disappointed, and at times repelled by the narrative. Clearly, Monica Ali doesn't have a clue about the real Bangladesh. I have to question whether she's ever traveled there. Her portrayals of the country are relegated to a strange rolling green idyllic village, and a non-visual, drab depiction of urban Dhaka. We thirst for more connection to the point of origin, but the author leaves us high and dry. Nazneen's home, which would explain so much of her supposed angst and identity issues, is hidden or rather inaccurately described by the author. Could a story be any more boring and stereotypical? Nazneen is married off to repugnant Chanu, who is significantly older than her, and consequently trapped in a loveless marriage transported to Brick Lane in London. She flits around her low income flat with grease stained sofas in a stupor, gives birth to two girls, and then begins an affair with the classic lover. A young, interested in all things Islam, muscular, tailor's nephew Karim. For goodness sakes, is this a Bangladeshi Bollywood film script? The film would at least have a song and dance routine to relieve the sheer predictability and repetitive boredom. I was so put off by Ali's constant descriptions of Chanu stroking his pot belly, droning on patriotic themes, and comparing his homeland to the evils of England and the English, that I wanted to gloss over those paragraphs. I kept looking at the page numbers to see how much more I would have to endure. A big portion of the book is devoted to the strange letters Nazneen receives from her sister in Bangladesh. It's best if I don't go into the sister's life because it is completely ludicrous, even vaudevillian dumb, prostitution and the lot, you get the idea. Back to the letters, the sister writes in broken, 'Banglafied' English that makes absolutely no stylistic or thematic sense. Is she writing in English? This can't be possible because Nazleen doesn't speak or write it either. So then why is her Bangla broken and in pigeon form, but then translated to doubly broken English? Is she mentally challenged? Ali doesn't indicate this at any point. If this is some attempt to be innovative in the novelistic form, Ali desperately needs an editor and many creative writing classes because it ain't working. Brick Lane is a book by a first time author that is riding on the 'all things South Asian are hip wave.' I hope that readers don't take this to be representative of an experience of an immigrant family from the subcontinent living in the West. Hype at it's worst. Don't waste your mind space on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: An immigrant's tale. Beautiful and tragic.
Review: I am from Bangladesh, and have lived in the West for some years. Although Westernized in many ways, I am acutely aware of the experience of being brown and Asian in the West. Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" touches me in multiple ways. "Brick Lane" is unique. There are many novels centered on Bengali housewives; unfortunately most are in Bengali and not translated. The number of novels with Bangladeshi women as protagonists is smaller. Novels dealing with Bangladeshi immigrant women are very rare --- Ms Ali is exploring new ground here. And she does it so touchingly, with such attention to detail and nuances. The novel is about Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and married off to an older man who is an immigrant in England. Nazneen moves to England, submits herself to fate as she has been taught to, bears life and children and her husband's stupidities, and watches her daughter grow Westernized. Eventually, she surprises herself by her own initiative, taking a lover and deciding not to return to Bangladesh with her husband. Other than Nazneen, the main characters are her husband Chanu, and her sister Hasina whom we meet through her letters to Nazneen written over the years. We also meet several other immigrant Bangladeshi characters living in Brick Lane, and get flashbacks of Nazneen's life in Bangladesh. Through Hasina's sporadic letters to Nazneen, which take up significant parts of the book, we follow the life of an unmarried lower-class woman in Bangladesh. Hasina, unlike Nazneen, chooses her own path in life and elopes as a teenager, but her husband leaves her and she suffers through a series of ordeals. Her life story is probably realistic and reflects the lives of the many poor rural women in Bangladesh who have moved to the cities in recent years, forced to be independent in a patriarchial society that resists women's independence. Like other reviewers, I was annoyed by the author's choice to transcribe Hasina's letters in broken English. This is the only major complaint I have about the book. The characterization of Nazneen's husband, Chanu, is masterly. Chanu is an educated but completely impractical person. A complete failure in British life, he toils away as a clerk hoping that his culture & worth will someday be appreciated. He borrows money and leaves his wife to deal with the usurer. He appreciates the wrong people, and is completely unable to deal with his daughter's rebellion. Perhaps even more paradigmic is Chanu's pompous behavior with his wife. The Bengali male, it has been said, is a great loser in life and a fearless lion in dealing with his subservient wife. Chanu actually thinks of himself as a liberated man, whose wife has complete freedom in theory. In practice, unfortunately, Nazneen does not get to taste any of these freedoms (such as learning the local language English). The reason is that "she does not need them", as Chanu assures her, and also because it is unnecessary to evoke gossip in the immigrant community. Chanu's laziness, his readings in impractical subjects, reminds me of my brother :-) And his complete inability to actually listen to anything Nazneen says, reminds me of my father's treatment of my mom. In return, Nazneen's response to Chanu, her near-complete acceptance and sporadic rebellions, reminds me of my mom and some aunts. As for the other characters, Nazneen's friend Razia is drawn beautifully, a strong woman who decides to Westernize herself, and keeps her enormous humor and sarcasm intact through the adversities of immigrant life. I liked her imitation of pompous people, a very Bengali kind of humor. A minor character particularly attracted me, Nazneen's aunt Mumtaz, seen almost entirely in flashbacks. Quietly strong, in a manner peculiar to some Bengali rural women. I have an aunt like that. The writing is, for the most part, low-keyed and subdued. This style seems fitting, as it reflects Nazneen's accepting, compromising attitude to life. Sometimes quietly funny, and sometimes emotionally exhausting, not always an easy book to read. There are some masterful descriptions, like that of Nazneen before her nervous breakdown watching her dead mom slide across her living room. Like the hilarious jostling among different brands of pseudo-Islamic factions in the young Bengali community. Or Razia being spat on after September 11, on a London street wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. And so on and so forth. Ms Ali has done a wonderful job. To the non-Bengali reader, I have an invitation: welcome to my world. Maybe you will find the setting too alien for you to be interested in. But maybe (I hope) you will actually discover a beautiful story set amongst a struggling people.
|
