Brick Lane - Softcover

Ali, Monica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552774456 ISBN 13: 9780552774451

Publisher: Black Swan, 2007

Synopsis

At the tender age of nineteen, Nazneen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village home for a block of flats in London's East End. In this new world, where poor people can be fat and even dogs go on diets, she struggles to make sense of her existence - and to do her duty to her husband. A man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliance.

But Nazneen submits, as she must do, to Fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demons of discontent. Until Karim, a young radical, steps into the picture.

Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazneen to take control of her life...

About this title

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

Review:

"Ali has an impressive command of her story, but her real gift is in the richness of the lives she has created, populating Nazneen's London with a very entertaining cast of comic characters" (The Times)

"I was totally gripped by Brick Lane. A brilliant evocation of sensuality which might occur anywhere" (Daily Telegraph)

"Written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime" (The Sunday Times)

"Comedy and poignancy abound... Brick Lane is a wonderful debut" (Sunday Telegraph)

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0552774456
• ISBN 13: 9780552774451
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512