Customer Reviews

Brick Lane: A Novel

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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.

Nazneen, a young bride married at sixteen to a 40-year-old man, is wrenched from the only life she has ever known in the countryside of Bangladesh and conveyed to England, where her new husband, Chanu, has a job. Taught from the day of her birth that "fighting against one's Fate can weaken the blood," or even be fatal, she accepts the miserably lonely existence that fate has bestowed on her in a London council flat. Nazneen's only contact with home is the letters she exchanges with her sister Hasina, whose own fate back home in Dhaka changes throughout the fifteen years that this novel takes place. Through these letters, author Ali shows the similarities and contrasts in the lives of Nazneen and Hasina, both subservient to their husbands, and, like other Bengali wives, powerless to control their fates in the culture in which they live.

With warmth and sensitivity, author Ali draws us into Nazneen's world, showing it in all its earthy details. The reader sees her increasingly cluttered apartment, hears the constant excuses and boasts from Chanu, gets lost with her on a walk in the city, and feels Nazneen's confusion and frustration with the isolation of her life, as she continues to act the dutiful wife, cutting Chanu's corns and trimming his nose hair while planning mini-rebellions. Her sister, eventually alone in Dhaka, struggles to support herself, doing whatever she has to do to stay alive in a culture in which her life has no value. But, as their mother once said, "If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men."

Speaking directly to the reader in unpretentious but vividly descriptive prose, Ali recreates the minutiae of Nazneen's life, showing how the seemingly unimportant decisions she begins to make acquire new meanings in her life. Through striking details, the reader watches her gradual acceptance of a new culture (which some would call "growth"), while her husband Chanu remains anchored in the traditions of the past. Her slow evolution is neither simple nor without conflict, and no member of the family escapes her transformation. Brick Lane reveals the emotional conflicts and the subtle changes that occur when an immigrant sees the possibilities inherent in a new culture, radically different from the culture of the past, and begins to embrace it.. Step by inevitable step, Ali shows just how this process evolves, creating a vibrant portrait of a family in transition and of a woman coming into her own. Mary Whipple

I am a devoted fan of Indian novelists, those particularly observant writers who miss no detail while creating intensely personal landscapes of time and place. In Brick Lane, author Ali examines the life of Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi wife. The young woman settles in a London enclave filled with other Bengali tenants, all seeking assimilation while maintaining their cultural identity. Surrounded by familiar objects and customs, the immigrant community is constantly assailed by the inevitability of Westernization.

Following custom, Nazneen dutifully accepts marriage to the much older Chanu. Nazneen is an obedient wife, settled now in her London flat, her homesickness brightened by letters from Hasina, Nazneen's sister, who flaunts tradition by marrying for love. Over the years, the differences in their worlds are apparent, as the letters they exchange reflect their diverse paths. Through their letters, Nazneen examines her days as mother and wife, governed by minutiae, while Hasina is often at the mercy of changing circumstances.

Bengali lives are governed by strict traditions. While eyes watch and tongues wag with gossip, most of the women shun Westernization. Still, there is a profound cultural disturbance beneath the surface of the Bengali's world. It is nearly impossible to make a decent living; most are forced to work demeaning jobs to support their households, regardless of education and among the young people, there is a growing unrest. Some embrace the new lifestyle, while others are outraged by the implicit denial of Islamic tradition.

Nazneen is patient, wedded to her fate, but the couple's two daughters are a constant irritation to Chanu, especially the oldest, who exhibits the usual teenage angst. Accepting employment as a taxi driver, working nights, he finally acknowledges the sad truth of his diminished job prospects. Borrowing from a moneylender, Chanu purchases a sewing machine for Nazneen so she can do piecework for a local manufacturer, contributing to the family income.

While doing this piecework, Nazneen meets a young man with revolutionary dreams who yearns to direct the local Muslim population away from secularization and back to strict religious traditions. Karim picks up Nazneen's sewing daily and befriending her, he gradually challenges Nazneen to redefine her priorities and unquestioning acceptance of Fate's directives. For the first time, through his eyes, Nazneen views herself as a woman.

This is a small story on a large canvas, the universal struggle of people searching for personal definition and quality of life. Like pieces of a quilt, Ali stitches her eccentric characters together with subtle precision, from kind-hearted, plain-faced friends to hawkish moneylenders bleeding customers dry and pedantic old men longing for their birth country. While they trudge through daily difficulties, dreaming of home, most Bengali's accept their gradual acculturation, if unwittingly. In her way, Nazneen struggles to find her voice as a mother and wife, a woman of two worlds. Luan Gaines/2003.

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.

"A man's character is his fate." With this quote from Heraclitus, Monica Ali takes us on Nazneen's 35-year fateful journey from her birth in 1967 in the Mymensingh District of East Pakistan to her independence in London in 2002. As a newborn she did not nurse for five days yet survived. In 1985, at age 18, she marries a man 22 years older whom she had never seen, a man who had been living in England since the early 1970s. Chanu needs her to cut his hair, his nails, and his corns, clip his nose hairs, feed him, keep his apartment clean, wash his clothes and to bear his children. When she is 21 she bears a son who dies after a year and then she has two daughters.

Chanu is educated and she is not. He has a degree from Dhaka University in English literature and is working for an Open University degree. She knew no English. When she expressed a desire to go college to learn English Chanu said "there was no need." What English she learned she learned from her daughters, who "demanded to be understood [in English]." She lives in a cube, with thin walls, falling plaster, and two sinks, in public housing. Her husband's ambition is humbled by the racial wall-at the age of 43 he resigns from his job in the council of the local government. After months of depression he determines to return to Dhaka and to raise money for his trip he becomes "driver number one-six one nine" for Kempton Kars.

It is Nazneen, however, who makes the money for the family with her sewing machine. She has an affair with a younger man when she is 34, a man who brings her garments to sew and is a founder of an active Islamic group, the Bengal Tigers. She learns about love from the wise Dr. Azad: ". . . 'there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts big and slowly wears away, that seem 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.'"

Nazneen's younger sister Hasina, is always in the background. She never leaves Bangladesh. At age16 she elopes in a love marriage, a marriage that fails. She works as a machine woman sewing garments but her beauty is too much and she is locked out of the factory, accused of licentious behavior. She becomes a prostitute and marries Ahmed, one of her clients. Family pressure causes him to later turn against her. She seeks refuge in the House of Falling Women, run by Brother Andrew from Canada. Lovely hires her as a nanny for her son and daughter. Ultimately she runs away again with Lovely's young cook. It is Hasina who tells Nazneen about their mother's suicide dressed in her best sari. This is the mother who told her daughters "'If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men."
Although Chanu has been gone from Bangladesh for over thirty years, he pines for home. He yearns for the sixteenth century, when Bengal was the "Paradise of Nations". When Dhaka was the home of textiles. When the Bengalis invented muslin and damask. In the Eighteenth Century Bengal provided one-third of the revenues of Britain's Indian Empire. He is pushed to return home by the anti-Islamic hostility after September 11, 2001. Chanu, at age 57, returns shortly thereafter without Nazneen and his daughter. He has plans to go into the soap business and to gain self respect.

The minor characters are fascinating and suggestive. In Bangladesh, there is Makku Pagla, always reading and carrying an umbrella who kills himself by falling down a well. There is Tamizuddin Mizra Haque the quiet barber who always knows the correct information about every thing. In London, there is Mrs. Islam, the money lender with her two sons, Number One and Number Two, as enforcers. There is Razia, Nazneen's closest friend whose husband dies when seventeen frozen cows fall on him in the slaughterhouse where he works. Her response is that "I can get that job now. No slaughter man to slaughter me now." Nazneen too becomes free for the first time with Chanu's departure for Bangladesh.
The novel has considerable depth to it. I strongly recommend it.

This is a highly intelligent novel with writing so evocative (and I'm not just talking about the cooking-with-spices and colourful-laundry stuff)that you know no movie of the week or Hollywood effort could ever do justice to it. The story is about Nazneen's life as a young Bangladeshi bride brought to London and her growing realization that she can manipulate "fate". Her husband is a silly buffoon who the reader at first despises but eventually feels some fondness for. Nazneen protests her unpleasant situation silently; for example, she refuses to eat in front of her husband. She eats out of Tupperware containers during the night standing over the sink. At one point she equally despises and pities her husband,simultaneously feeling like "going to him and stroking his head ....and getting up from the table and walking out of the door and never seeing him again." Familiar feelings anyone? My only complaint about this excellent book is the device of conveying Nazeen's sister's thoughts through letters from Bangladesh. They hardly ring true. Why couldn't Hasina's (the sister) version be told, like Nazneen's, in the third person? Her letters are a silly combination of Bengali-English and incredible insight conveyed with what is meant to be naivete. They don't work. However, this is the book's only flaw. The story is fascinating, rolls along at a good pace, is very, very funny and very, very tragic. It is a story that is rich in detail yet every word, in English or Bengali, is necessary. When you have finished reading it you feel enriched, educated, chastened, entertained, and hungry for more books by Monica Ali.

This lengthy and ambitious first novel explores, with indifferent success, the lives of Bangladeshi immigrants to London and the growth in independence and modification of culture of a young Bangladeshi woman.

The heroine of the book is Nazneen who at the age of 20 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu, age 40, a Banladeshi struggling to establish himself in London. Chanu is striving for a promotion, is proud of his attempts to secure education, and is portrayed at the outset of the book as rather vain and foolish. Bangladeshi society and traditional Islamic practices are patriarchal by western lights, and much is made of this throughout the book. Nanzeen and Chanu have a son, who dies as an infant, and two daughters Shahana and Bibi. Mid-way in the book, with her growth in independence and awareness of her physical and emotional needs, Nanzeen takes a lover, a young man and would-be Islamic radical named Karim. Nanzeen has a beautiful younger sister, Hasina, who remains in Bangladesh, and writes many letters to her sister in a broken English about the course of her life and its hardships.

The book gives a portrait of life of the Bangladeshi immigrant community in London. I had no prior knowledge of this community. It describes how the immigrants lived in cramped living conditions in the poorer sections of town with up to ten people per room trying to support themselves in a culture utterly foreign to most of them. Some of the people work at assimilation while others try to retain their religious and Bangladeshi identity. Drugs and violence come to plague the community and, of course, the open sexual mores of modern London prove irresistable to many. The community is shown as divided in its response to the terrorism that has come to dominate world news in recent years.

There are a host of well-drawn secondary characters in this novel, including the loan-shark, Mrs. Islam, Nanzeen's lover, named Karim, a friend of Chanu named Dr. Azad, and Razia, a friend of Nanzeen. These characters give weight and texture to the novel and partly succeed in bringing it to life.

The book focuses on Nanzeen's development, and the parallel development of Hasina, as it involves Nanzeen's husband, her lover, and, ultimately her independence. It also centers upon Chanu's and Nanzeen's differing desires in terms of returning to Bangladesh.

I was intrigued by the excellence of the 100-some discussions by my fellow Amazon reviewers and by the wide divergence of considered responses to this book. Reading the reviews helped me focus upon my own response to the book. Many reviewers found this novel an outstanding first attempt to describe the immigrant experience of the Bangladeshis and the personal growth of the heroine. Other readers found the novel vastly overpraised, difficult, and trite. There is something to be said for both views, but on the whole I agree with the latter opinion. I was happy to have it reinforced by a substantial group of fellow reviewers.

The book does portray eloquently the difficulties of the Bangladeshi immigrant community and provokes reflection on how many individuals, in immigrating to a new land, respond to the various choices of assimilation on the one hand and remaining deeply attached to one's initial identity on the other hand. Some of the characters in this book are convincingly drawn. But these are largely the secondary characters, such as Mrs. Islam and Dr. Azad, and also, surprisingly enough, Chanu, Nanzeen's husband.

The problems with this book far outweigh its virtues. To begin with, I found it far too long, too slow, and, in many places, dull. It was an unrelieved chore to finish this book. The long sections of letters to Nazneen from her sister Hasina break up the story are difficult to read and detract much more than they add.

Equally important, the character on whom Ms. Ali lavishes most of her attention, Nazneen, is trite and unconvincing. I don't think we need another long novel to inform the reader that traditional Islamic society is patriarchal. At times, both at the beginning and at the end of the story, the book does little more than that. Portions of the Nanzeen's development show more depth, as Nanzeen learns of her sexuality and also stands up to Mrs. Islam. But the main theme of the book is predictable and boring and has been done many times in many other contexts.

While Nazneen's development shows predictable stereotyping, the author, possibly in spite of herself does a better job with Chanu who for all his faults is a complexly drawn human being deserving of compassion and, perhaps, of a better fate.

Thus, in spite of some good moments, I cannot recommend this book due to its length and structure and due to its stereotyped plot line and heroine. I found it worthwhile to review the comments of my fellow reviewers and to offer my own comments here.

Robin Friedman

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.

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.

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