Just to show how critics reacted to Ali´s masterpiece, I will give two examples briefly.
People who actually live in the estate of Brick Lane feel being patronized by Ali´s novel the more or the less. The novel is highly disputed with its most important aspects of identity, belonging and community problems. This research paper deals with Monica Ali´s first novel Brick Lane, an epic saga about a Bangladeshi family living in London, which explores the British immigration experience.
Brick Lane: A Guide to Post-Colonial Literature? Brick Lane: A Bengali Community in London – The Discrepancy of Two Worldsģ. (Sept.)įorecast: Ali, who was the only unpublished writer on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2003 list, should attract considerable attention as she embarks on a five-city author tour in the U.S.2. Carefully observed and assured, the novel is free of pyrotechnics, its power residing in Ali's unsparing scrutiny of its hapless, hopeful protagonists. By keeping the focus on their perceptions, Ali comments on larger issues of identity and assimilation without drawing undue attention to the fact, even gracefully working in September 11. The realistic complexity of the characters is quietly stunning: Nazneen shrugs off her passivity at just the right moment, and the supporting cast-Chanu, the ineffectual patriarch Nazneen's defiant and struggling neighbor, Razia (proud wearer of a Union Jack sweatshirt) and Karim, the foolish young Muslim radical with whom Nazneen eventually has an affair-are all richly drawn. Nazneen, for her part, leads a relatively circumscribed life as a housewife and mother, and her experience of London in the 1980s and '90s is mostly indirect, through her children (rebellious Shahana and meek Bibi) and her variously assimilated neighbors.
Chanu fancies himself a frustrated intellectual and continually expounds upon the "tragedy of immigration" to his young wife (and anyone else who will listen), while letters from downtrodden Hasina provide a contrast to his idealized memories of Bangladesh. After a brief opening section set in East Pakistan-Nazneen's younger sister, the beautiful Hasina, elopes in a love marriage, and the quiet, plain Nazneen is married off to an older man-Ali begins a meticulous exploration of Nazneen's life in London, where her husband has taken her to live. The immigrant world Ali chronicles in this penetrating, unsentimental debut has much in common with Zadie Smith's scrappy, multicultural London, though its sheltered protagonist rarely leaves her rundown East End apartment block where she is surrounded by fellow Bangladeshis. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review. A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality.
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