Brick Lane: A Novel
by Monica Ali
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avg 3.13
Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
somebody who wants to read it
Could it take me longer to read a book? I made myself read this book everyday so I could be done with it and properly hate it.
Look at what the NY Review of Books said:
"Ali succeeds brilliantly in presenting the besieged humanity of people living hard, little-known lives on the margins of a rich, self-absorbed society."
WHO IS THIS CRAZY NUT? You need to read a book like Brick Lane to understand "besieged humanity" or what it's like to live a "hard, li...more
Look at what the NY Review of Books said:
"Ali succeeds brilliantly in presenting the besieged humanity of people living hard, little-known lives on the margins of a rich, self-absorbed society."
WHO IS THIS CRAZY NUT? You need to read a book like Brick Lane to understand "besieged humanity" or what it's like to live a "hard, li...more
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Read in March, 2008
Nazneen is the eldest of two girls, growing up in a village in Bangladesh. Her younger sister Hasina runs away to marry the young man she is in love with, and not long after that, when she is eighteen, Nazneen is married to a man twenty years older than her and sent to live with him in London.
Her husband, Chanu, is kind and very talkative. They live in a dingy flat on an estate where she makes friends with some other Bangladeshi women. Her world is narrow and small, consisting of the flat an...more
Her husband, Chanu, is kind and very talkative. They live in a dingy flat on an estate where she makes friends with some other Bangladeshi women. Her world is narrow and small, consisting of the flat an...more
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Read in February, 2008
My favorite quotes from "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali
Amma said to her daughters: "If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men" (53).
"Razia waved the lollipop in front of Raqib's [the toddler's:] face. He watched it devotedly. He became its disciple. For its sake, he would sacrifice everything" (65).
Hasina on corruption in Bangladeshi education: "University is also close down. All students hold protest. They rallying for right to c...more
Amma said to her daughters: "If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men" (53).
"Razia waved the lollipop in front of Raqib's [the toddler's:] face. He watched it devotedly. He became its disciple. For its sake, he would sacrifice everything" (65).
Hasina on corruption in Bangladeshi education: "University is also close down. All students hold protest. They rallying for right to c...more
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Read in January, 2008
This was a pleasure to read. The characters are memorable and the story line superb. It does have a Dickens-like quality not only because the story takes place in London's East End but because the author's words transport you...
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Read in July, 2007
I desperately wanted to like this book. Having lived the immigrant, foreigner, displaced person lifestyle for so long, I wanted this book to capture everything that it means to have lost links with my own personal history in the effort to fit into the culture that's welcomed me into it's monied bosom.
But Nazneen is not me. She's a village girl without education and more importantly, the confidence education brings to a traveller navigating a foreign world.
I snacked with her in the dead ...more
But Nazneen is not me. She's a village girl without education and more importantly, the confidence education brings to a traveller navigating a foreign world.
I snacked with her in the dead ...more
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Read in May, 2008
This book impressed me because of its immersiveness. Not only in terms of time and place, although that was very well handled, but mostly in terms of character. There are few modern human experiences that could be farther from my own than those of a woman born and raised in Bangladesh relocating to London after an arranged marriage to a man already living there. But I found the main character of Brick Lane, Nazneen, to be very relatable, to the point where I ended up totally immersed in her s...more
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Read in January, 2005
It's a bit draconian to give a book that sells so well only one star, but that's my rating for a book I don't make it through. I read a full third of this book waiting for the protagonist (Nanzeen) to be interesting and it didn't happen. The one highlight was the small window into Bengali/Pakistani culture (before chapter 2 moves to Britain). It's a book about fate and how one acts as a follower in life. And the exceedingly slow learning process Nanzeen goes through when she starts to discov...more
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Read in January, 2004
Brick Lane is the story of a uneducated woman from a small village in Bangladesh who moves to Brick Lane in London with her new husband after an arranged marriage. Like many other immigrant novels, this book touches on themes of culture clash and the struggle to adapt to the new country. The main character in "Brick Lane" initially feels that it is her fate to be the dutiful wife, living in her husband's shadow. She slowly begins to realize that she can be her own person.
Th...more
Th...more
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Read in October, 2008
I read Brick Lane with my book club at work. I was not overly excited about it when it was first presented as it would not be a book I would ordinarily choose on my own. However, I understand that it is part of the idea behind a book club - to read things you might not select yourself, but to try and glean something from it all the same.
Monica Ali has an understated way of writing that weighs less as intriguing but borders more on straight up boring. The story centers around a woman, Na...more
Monica Ali has an understated way of writing that weighs less as intriguing but borders more on straight up boring. The story centers around a woman, Na...more
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Read in January, 2005
I hated this book. I found it impossible to get through and this at a time when I was utterly obsessed with novels based in and around women from India. I couldn't finish it and am continually surprised to see it so favorably reviewed and praised. Usually I'm in agreement about a great book, but this one I just don't share the feelings on.
Although i see that other Good Reads readers felt similiarly, which somehow makes me feel better.
Although i see that other Good Reads readers felt similiarly, which somehow makes me feel better.
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Read in January, 2008
This was a good read that kept me coming back for more, but the ending left me slightly puzzled: I couldn't quite understand the characters' motivations for the paths that they took, and I felt that Nazneem's actions didn't fit the character that had been created until that point. Despite this, I'd recommend this book to all as an engaging read.
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Read in November, 2008
Brick Lane is one of those books in which nothing much seems to happen—and yet, at the end of five hundred pages, you sit back and realise just how much of a sea change those five hundred pages have wrought in the main character, Nazneen. Ali has a deft hand with characterisation; Chanu, the husband, is an excellent example of a character who would have been a villain in many other novels, yet who here is exasperating and tragi-comic figure almost completely lacking in self-awarenes...more
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Read in October, 2008
Pinjaman dari Amang, yg dapat bukunya dari Monic. Setelah dapat wanti-wanti bahwa buku ini bikin bosan karena cuma berkutat pada masalah sehari-hari, saya pun mempersiapkan diri untuk bersabar membaca sampai tuntas. Meski ceritanya memang berpanjang-panjang dan awalnya terkesan membosankan tetapi semakin dibaca semakin penasaran bagaimana akhir kisah ini.
Nazneen, seorang gadis dari pedesaan Bangladesh dijodohkan dengan pria yang usianya dua kali lipat dari dirinya. Ia diboyong ke London, Ing...more
Nazneen, seorang gadis dari pedesaan Bangladesh dijodohkan dengan pria yang usianya dua kali lipat dari dirinya. Ia diboyong ke London, Ing...more
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Read in November, 2005
Well-told story about interesting circumstances, but didn't you just want to yell at her to grow a pair?
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Monica Ali is a beautiful writer about a story that unfortunately is sounding all too familiar since the start of the war against terror. The eyes of American media turned to hajibs and burkas and as a result brought an onslaught of repressed Middle Eastern characters, mostly female, to the bestseller's list. If you like the vivid tales of Khaled Hosseini wait for his next novel-- Brick Lane is along the same lines but without much hope and wonder in the world, leaving me with a feeling of depr...more
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Read in April, 2008
This book started off great and I was immediately engrossed in it. It's about a Bangladeshi woman who moves to England with her new husband, and her "fish out of water" experience while living in a Bengal community in London. However, the middle of the book started to drag and was hard to get through--she meets a young radical who she has an affair with--and I started to lose interest. The ending also baffled me a bit...I couldn't quite figure out why she did what she did. Overall ...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
Suckers for South Asian fiction in English
Our humble heroine, Nazneen, moves from her childhood rural village in Bangladesh to London for an arranged marriage and learns to love Western-style freedom among the misfits in her predominantly south-Asian housing estate. Or something like that. What makes the book a comfortable companion in the hour before bed is not so much our heroine's emergence into self-actualization (which begins rather late in the book, and feels like it was tacked on so that the author could sell the story to Hollywo...more
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Read in March, 2008
I bought this book at the airport before a transatlantic journey. My enjoyment of this book was rudely interrupted when I reached page 320 only to discover that the 'next' page was 273! A whole section of the book had the wrong pages in it (or, if you prefer, some of the right pages repeated and others missed out!)
When I did manage to get a replacement I had kind of lost my momentum and just wanted to get to the end of the story. Pity, really, because up until that point I had been really enjoy...more
When I did manage to get a replacement I had kind of lost my momentum and just wanted to get to the end of the story. Pity, really, because up until that point I had been really enjoy...more
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Read in August, 2005
In light of the July 7 London bombings I read this book because I wanted to have another perspective into the lives of Muslims in Great Britain. Monica Ali makes a provocative and rewarding leap in her first novel about Nazneen a young Bangladeshi woman who comes to England to marry Chanu, an older man of questionable intelligence. Throughout the book Nazneen comes to terms with her racial, gender and religious identities as a Muslim woman in comtemporary London. One can see the gap between the ...more
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Read in October, 2007
Brick Lane in East London is famous for its market and curries. It was initially the place where immigrants from Bangladesh settled but has become increasingly popular with tourists and Londoners alike who flock there every Sunday in search of a bargain and a good meal. In "Brick Lane", Monica Ali takes one resident and her family and lets us share their days. She ably describes what is going on, recalls reflections from the past and vivid memories from a life that seemed better, and i...more
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