Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Just really never got in to the characters and I felt the book jumped all over the place. Also, thought the relationship w/the young man Nazneen meets would be more exciting or refreshing -- a total let down.
I didn't care about the characters at all and felt overwhelmed by all of the "letters" regarding Hasina, Nazneen's sister.
Really didn't enjoy it at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Sensual, descriptive, brilliant
Review: Monica Ali has a tremendous talent for creating characters who exemplify the doubts & struggles we all face in life. Her descriptions of places, from London to the villages in Bangladesh, teem with vivid detail. She tells her characters' stories not by dumping the details on the page in plain sight, but rather by implying things; she does not take her reader for a fool. This book was such a joy to read. I learned a lot about a different culture, & I loved that the characters are not perfect but do have flaws, yet they live by principles which make you respect them as people. Her strength in writing can perhaps be seen best in the character of Chanu, who despite being deeply flawed, is still very sympathetic. It is her ability to capture the complexity of real life that amazed me page after page. I have not read such a wonderful book since "The God of Small THings" by Arundati Roy. I can't wait for Ali's next book!
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: Fascination in the mundane and everyday
Review: Nanzeen is a Bangladeshi woman who marries young, sent to Britain to a husband chosen by her father. This book follows her journey, from naive village girl to mother of two living in modern London. This book has been highly feted since before its publication (the author made it onto the Granta authors under 40 list based on an unpublished manuscript). As usually happens, this book doesn't quite live up to expectations. It has its faults - Ali uses the device of letters written by Nanzeen's sister to forward the plot, and while in short doses it is interesting, she over-uses it and a whole chapter of these letters is too much, especially as they are written in childish, broken English. And the pivotal affair between Nanzeen and a young Islamic activist is not very credible. But there is more good about this book than bad - every character feels well rounded, and their motivations seem plausible without being overly obvious. This is a book that touches on a lot of political points (Islam, women's rights, culture clash etc) but avoids the soapbox and none feels shoehorned in. Most importantly, this is an interesting story well written that carries you along to the very end. While the setting and plot on first inspection could be considered mundane - a woman living in a council flat who does little else but cook, clean and care for her husband & children - is developed into an interesting story by great characterisation and a vibrant spin on universal themes. This is a longish book - over 400 pages - but it doesn't read as such. Taken on its own merits, rather than as the great 'Bangla' hope, this is a worthwhile book.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing first novel!
Review: The main, only really, lesson Nazneen's mother teaches her is submission to fate. Indeed, Nazneen is "left to her fate" from birth, when she is at first thought to be stillborn. This is a recurrent theme and it's interesting to see how it plays out in her life.
Nazneen's sister Hasina's long letters in broken English -- I suppose it's supposed to be broken Bengali -- at first seem a bit tough to read. But *do* read them as they add a lot to the story.
One reviewer poses the rhetorical question "Who wants to read about some Bangladeshi housewife (or, for that matter, any housewife) holed up in their (sic) boring existence? Well, speaking as on of those boring housewives, I had a hard time believing that we'd read the same book (boring?). I guess fine storytelling, culture clash and psychological insights won't interest everyone.
The one criticism I have is that Monica Ali ties up all the loose ends a bit to neatly for my taste. Brick Lane is so rich and complicated -- until the last few chapters where ALL IS EXPLAINED.
All in all, though, Brick Lane is a definite must-read.
Rating:
Summary: A Woman's Awakening
Review: The Story tells the story of one woman's journey to find her true self-desires, interests, opinions. I had a difficult time putting it down, but there were parts that were somewhat dry.
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: A book I will think about for a long time
Review: This Booker Prize-nominated novel provides engaging characters and thought-provoking insight into the Muslim immigrant world. The main character, Nazneen, is a young "unspoiled" Bangladeshi village girl who enters into an arranged marriage with a much older Bangladeshi who lives in London. Her beautiful sister defies her father's wishes and elopes in a love match, running off to Dakha. Nazneen has been raised to accept whatever happens to her, but in London, gradually (over the course of 15 years or so) begins to take control of her own life. Her husband Chanu at first seems clownlike, for example, he frames a collection of meaningless certificates for very minor achievements. Chanu regards himself as a scholar, because he has a BA from a Bangladeshi university, but he realizes that in Britain, he is regarded as nobody of any importance). Nazneen is expected to trim his corns every night, and later, his daughters are expected to sit beside him as he reads to turn the pages for him. But Chanu is a complex person who has a good heart, and the reader develops a fondness for this would-be patriarch. Life has not turned out as he wanted or expected, but he is devoted to his family. Nazneen, on the other hand, had no expectations of life but has been swept along like a piece of wood in a river. Her transformation -- how to combine the traditional values and reject what is problematic in the western world while recognizing what is bad about the old ways and changing -- forms the plot of the book. In the background is her sister's story, told in letters; the sister, who was more proactive in her choices, suffers the consequences, and it's hard to avoid wondering if the sister would not have been better off in an arranged marriage. The reader is left pondering Western vs. non-Western values, particularly with regard to love and marriage. Like other reviewers, I found the use of broken English in her sister's letters baffling and annoying -- fortunately they were a comparatively small part of the book. If her sister was writing in Bengali, wouldn't it be grammatical at least? And why would her sister write in English (which would explain the bad grammar)? The author has done a great job of creating a very different world for the reader to inhabit. Life for Muslim women both in a council estate (public housing project) in London (Nazneen's story) and a large city in Bangladesh (her sister's story) are described vividly and without romantic illusions. This is not a quickly read book, but it certainly held my interest all the way through, and I will remember these characters for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Seeking Love That is True
Review: Wars occur. Deaths bring misery to families. Time moves on and the world changes. Amidst all this, love still occurs, no matter its fashion. In Brick Lane, author Monica Ali presents the story of two Indian sisters as they seek love. Hasina elopes in a love marriage and seems to fall into love naturally while Nanzeen moves to London as part of an arranged marriage and waits for love to grow in her union. Throughout this modern-day love story, September 11 happens and the war on terrorism begins. What could be a story focused on the state of Indians during our current political climate, in fact becomes a tale of love. What is it and how does one find it? Ali introduces, as a backdrop to her story, an accepted definition of love by Indian elders. "There are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand." Brick Lane starts out seemingly as propaganda for the merits of arranged marriages. Nanzeen marries Chanu, a much older, unattractive man who is pompous and long-winded. However, Chanu provides for her and treats her kindly. Nanzeen first views her husband in disgust as she grooms him and his home. Eventually though, she finds comfort in the stability in her life and wonder if what she feels for him is love. Hasina flees her home in Bangladesh to marry her love, writing to her sister that, "We have love. Love is happiness. I feel to run and jump like goat." That love soon fizzles, however, and Hasina flees that home and finds herself on the go for many years. Communicating via letters, the sisters exchange accounts of their lives: new children, the deaths of children, new jobs and friends, etc. Both seem to share in questioning, "Have I found love? Is this what love is?" Both do not come to the same conclusion. The answers they find effect their life decisions and ultimately the happiness and freedom they find in life.
Ali brings a surprising story in Brick Lane by not writing a clichéd story of either love or the life of an Indian woman. Instead she confronts real issues and does so in a way that may leave the reader disagreeing with her or the character's decisions. In writing her story in this way, she introduces people to new ideas the realities facing many (Indian) women today.
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