Brick Lane - Monica Ali

The Blurb At the tender age of 18 Nazneen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man 20 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 har husband. A man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliannce. But Nazneen submits, as she must to fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demons of discontent. Until she becomes aware of a young radical, Karim. Against a background of escaltting racial ...  Read the complete review

After hearing about this book being made into a movie I thought I would head down to my local bookshop and check it out. People who know me will know that I will always read a book before seeing the movie if possible, as I think in most cases the book is always better. Brick Lane is essentially a story of life in the area of London known as Tower Hamlets in 1985. The main character of the story is Nazneen who at 18 is sent over to England from Bangladesh to be part of an arranged marriage to a man called Chanu who is twenty years her senior. The book shows you how Nazneen's life's changes and evolves with the passing of time and how her life in England begins ...  Read the complete review

There are already several reviews of this book here and at least two of them are remarkable and worth reading. Why then am I bothering? The fact that I am bothering at all shows probably how rich the novel I am writing about is, and how everybody can pull out something to ponder on from it. The main reason I am bothering though is that it is a good read. I believe that everybody from fairly sophisticated reader looking for intellectual stimulation to a casual consumer of so called 'female fiction' read purely for fun would be able to read and enjoy this novel. The book tells the story of Nazneen, apparently stillborn in Bangladesh village in 1967 ...  Read the complete review

Brick Lane is not the kind of book that would usually make it onto my reading list. I struggle even to fit it into any kind of genre, as this is unlike anything I have ever read before. Attracted by the title ?Brick Lane?, and intrigued by the sheer number of plaudits and accolades that bedeck the cover, regarding the talent of author Monica Ali, that?s what really motivated me to buy it. My intrigue was also borne by the fact that when I first moved from Scotland to London at the tender age of 21, I lived less than ten minutes from Brick Lane, right in the depths of Stepney, Tower Hamlets, where there was a massive Bangladeshi immigrant community. This is the ...  Read the complete review

Tipped by Granta before her debut novel had even been published, Monica Ali was always going to be a name to watch. After a brief time on the bookstore shelves she made it onto the Booker Prize short list, along with several other novels that the British public at large seemed mostly unaware of, not least the eventual winner. Ali was pipped to the post, but still should be proud of so many accolades in such a short space of time for her writing. Other novelists never achieve what she has done. And I'm sure knowing I've said such things will be the icing on the cake for her. The book in question is 'Brick Lane'. A tale that sprawls everywhere and ...  Read the complete review