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Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Sep. 24th, 2007 01:40 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
At the tender age of eighteen, Nazeen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village 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 Nazeen submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demonds of discontent. Until she becomes aware of a young radical, Karim.
Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazeen to take control of her life ...
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
From an interesting beginning, Ali's story disintegrates into cliches and unsympathetic characters. At no point did I ever manage to empathise with Nazeen or her plight and there were times when I felt that Ali took a somewhat condescending attitude towards people who lack education. The vast majority of male characters in the book are hypocrites, rapists, abusers or useless, something that made me feel very uncomfortable. Rather than an examination of women in Bangladeshi culture, I felt that I was being subjected to cultural stereotypes that were poorly drawn. Structurally the book didn't work for me - the letters from Hasina really needed to be in chapters of their own as they served to at times confuse timelines (in fact, the only time where I felt they worked was when Ali did put them in their own chapter). There were times when the timing felt incoherent as Ali jumps around between Nazeen's past and stories from her childhood and what was happening to her in the 'present'. I did like the storyline with the evil Mrs Islam, who I felt was well portrayed and Razia, Nazeen's friend was well drawn but they weren't enough to engage my interest for the last half of the book.
At the tender age of eighteen, Nazeen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village 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 Nazeen submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demonds of discontent. Until she becomes aware of a young radical, Karim.
Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazeen to take control of her life ...
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): ) The Verdict:
From an interesting beginning, Ali's story disintegrates into cliches and unsympathetic characters. At no point did I ever manage to empathise with Nazeen or her plight and there were times when I felt that Ali took a somewhat condescending attitude towards people who lack education. The vast majority of male characters in the book are hypocrites, rapists, abusers or useless, something that made me feel very uncomfortable. Rather than an examination of women in Bangladeshi culture, I felt that I was being subjected to cultural stereotypes that were poorly drawn. Structurally the book didn't work for me - the letters from Hasina really needed to be in chapters of their own as they served to at times confuse timelines (in fact, the only time where I felt they worked was when Ali did put them in their own chapter). There were times when the timing felt incoherent as Ali jumps around between Nazeen's past and stories from her childhood and what was happening to her in the 'present'. I did like the storyline with the evil Mrs Islam, who I felt was well portrayed and Razia, Nazeen's friend was well drawn but they weren't enough to engage my interest for the last half of the book.
