90 books
—
11 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Brick Lane” as Want to Read:
Brick Lane
by
Wildly embraced by critics, readers, and contest judges (who put it on the short-list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize), Brick Lane is indeed a rare find: a book that lives up to its hype. Monica Ali's debut novel chronicles the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi girl so sickly at birth that the midwife at first declares her stillborn. At 18 her parents arrange a marriage to Chan
...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
June 2003
by Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
(first published May 31st 2003)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Brick Lane,
please sign up.
Popular Answered Questions
Alexianne
No, Bangladesh.
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Start your review of Brick Lane
Jul 11, 2007
Nancy
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
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, little-known" life?
The protaganist moves around ...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, little-known" life?
The protaganist moves around ...more
I don't know why they do it but they do it a lot - on the title page it says
Brick Lane : A Novel
And there I was expecting this oblong of printed material to be
Brick Lane : A New Kind of Vacuum Cleaner
Anyway. Other reviews would have you believe that this book is terrifically boring, beaten only for tediousness by Some Variations in the Major Groups of Plankton of the Kamchatka Peninsula Littoral by R.K. Litkynshovskaya and P.I. Podgorna-Bialaczczka. So why did I really enjoy this novel? Could ...more
Brick Lane : A Novel
And there I was expecting this oblong of printed material to be
Brick Lane : A New Kind of Vacuum Cleaner
Anyway. Other reviews would have you believe that this book is terrifically boring, beaten only for tediousness by Some Variations in the Major Groups of Plankton of the Kamchatka Peninsula Littoral by R.K. Litkynshovskaya and P.I. Podgorna-Bialaczczka. So why did I really enjoy this novel? Could ...more
That was not what I expected.
Not that I can define very well what I did expect. I am curious that Ali, after making a splash with this book and writing a few more novels has pretty much disappeared.
I supposed I imagined that this book would very strongly a novel of the New Labour era that by now would be well past it's best before date and that it would smell dated and stale. It is dated in that I could see a novelist tackling the same topic might be angrier and there would not be minor touches ...more
Not that I can define very well what I did expect. I am curious that Ali, after making a splash with this book and writing a few more novels has pretty much disappeared.
I supposed I imagined that this book would very strongly a novel of the New Labour era that by now would be well past it's best before date and that it would smell dated and stale. It is dated in that I could see a novelist tackling the same topic might be angrier and there would not be minor touches ...more
I would have to force myself to finish reading this book and quite frankly I don't want to. Neither like nor care what happens to these characters.
...more
There's a good reason that Brick Lane was short-listed for the Man Booker award, and was nominated for a whole slew of other prizes too. It is just brilliant. That doesn't mean that it is necessarily fun to read. (A 16 year old Bangladeshi girl is married off to a 40 year old guy in London, and goes there to start a new life in almost poverty. No, not exactly a "fun" topic…) However, the descriptions are brilliant, and the story itself is mesmerizing. The subplots are rich and believable. You re
...more
I thought this book was really interesting as it gave an insight into being an immigrant in England and it also gave insights into life in Bangladesh. Of course, Monica Ali has been scrutinised because she doesn't speak fluent Bangladeshi etc and I know nothing about the being an immigrant myself but I felt like the representation she gave felt really authentic.
I thought the characters were brilliant. They were really interesting and I felt like nearly every one of them added to the story. They ...more
I thought the characters were brilliant. They were really interesting and I felt like nearly every one of them added to the story. They ...more
Monica Ali's prose is the literary equivalent of a curry with too many cardamom seeds.
...more
Jul 09, 2012
Shovelmonkey1
rated it
liked it
Recommends it for:
people with microscopes
Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by:
i like brightly coloured book covers
This is not what I was expecting. Don’t ask me what I was expecting because it is not a definable quantity and defies explanation but when I bought this book on a whim because I liked the juxtaposition of white background and colourful printed letters, this was not it.
Ali has created a book for those who love the microscopic and want a very detailed picture of a very limited section of space and time. Hold on you might say, this book moves from 1985 and Nazneen’s arrival in England all the way u ...more
Ali has created a book for those who love the microscopic and want a very detailed picture of a very limited section of space and time. Hold on you might say, this book moves from 1985 and Nazneen’s arrival in England all the way u ...more
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 of night ...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 of night ...more
Rating: 2* of five
A long succession of standard tropes, cliched dialogue, and stock characters made somehow new and fresh by the fact that they're all of Indian descent.
Frankly, I found it lazy and felt the decent author behind the blandness of the book should be given a "D"--not passing, not failing, not much of anything at all. I'll pass on this one's career. Returned to my facility's library shelves, with a slight twinge of guilt for not putting it in the little free library just down the boa ...more
A long succession of standard tropes, cliched dialogue, and stock characters made somehow new and fresh by the fact that they're all of Indian descent.
Frankly, I found it lazy and felt the decent author behind the blandness of the book should be given a "D"--not passing, not failing, not much of anything at all. I'll pass on this one's career. Returned to my facility's library shelves, with a slight twinge of guilt for not putting it in the little free library just down the boa ...more
This book left me with quite mixed feelings to be honest. I wanted to love it, it’s been compared to White Teeth by Zadie Smith which is one of my all time faves, but I thought it lacked the vibrancy and liveliness of White Teeth, despite both of them portraying the lives of immigrants in London.
.
Brick Lane follows Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who moves to London for an arranged marriage. I think the slowness of the book comes from the passivity of Nazneen, as she doesn’t really do much for much ...more
.
Brick Lane follows Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who moves to London for an arranged marriage. I think the slowness of the book comes from the passivity of Nazneen, as she doesn’t really do much for much ...more
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 and Br ...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 and Br ...more
I did enjoy this novel; it goes at a good pace and there is a warmth about it that I appreciated. The structure of the novel is interesting. Nazneen is born in a village in Bangladesh; when old enough she is married to Chanu, a much older man who lives in England. She goes to England as a bride in her teens in 1985. The story follows her over the next years (until 2002) as she has children and mixes with the Bangladeshi community around Brick Lane. The novel also cuts to her sister Hasina back i
...more
Monica Ali is able to capture the sense of discombobulation felt by both both first generation immigrants; whether it is the Shakespeare-loving Chanu, who on the one hand sees himself as a lover of English literature, a sensitive, educated and artistically minded man who missed his calling as the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, but on the hand deeply feels the deep-seated prejudices he experiences in Britain and begins to hate the modernity taking over the country, a kind of walking co
...more
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 discover s
...more
Monica Ali's "Brick Lane"
This lengthy and ambitious first novel explores, with indifferent success, the lives of Bangladeshi immigrants to London and the growth in independence and modification of culture of a young Bangladeshi woman.
The heroine of the book is Nazneen who at the age of 20 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu, age 40, a Banladeshi struggling to establish himself in London. Chanu is striving for a promotion, is proud of his attempts to secure education, and is portrayed at the o ...more
This lengthy and ambitious first novel explores, with indifferent success, the lives of Bangladeshi immigrants to London and the growth in independence and modification of culture of a young Bangladeshi woman.
The heroine of the book is Nazneen who at the age of 20 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu, age 40, a Banladeshi struggling to establish himself in London. Chanu is striving for a promotion, is proud of his attempts to secure education, and is portrayed at the o ...more
$9.99 kindle
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 cheat. In my heart I support. Some who af ...more
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 cheat. In my heart I support. Some who af ...more
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. ...more
Although i see that other Good Reads readers felt similiarly, which somehow makes me feel better. ...more
Brick Lane is an interesting book. The central character, Nazneen is totally passive, almost too passive. It should be noted, however, that Monica Ali does a good job of setting up that passivity. From the very first page of the book, the reader is shown and told that Nazneen is passive, that she was raised to leave things to fate.
The problem with the passiveness of the central character is that it can make the book insufferable, you want her to do. It is here that I have to give Ali points. Th ...more
The problem with the passiveness of the central character is that it can make the book insufferable, you want her to do. It is here that I have to give Ali points. Th ...more
Loved this book. The author makes the everyday and often sorrowful events of this woman's life poetic. It is about ordinary life, struggles, hardships, conflicts of faith, duty and culture, and yet for all that it is also beautiful... Giving the details of the good in life which comes with the bad... Showing Nazneen's love for her children, her understanding of god and faith, her sister's search for the life she wants... and although it wasn't always easy to read, it was captivating. The world o
...more
July 2010
I've been currently reading this since July . . . and even though I'm about to hit the climax of the novel (I hope), I don't know if I can be bothered. I can't understand why this book just doesn't grip me; but I keep putting it aside for other, more compelling, books.
July 2014
After four years, I picked this book up again. For some reason, I was able to imaginatively immerse myself in the world of the characters in a way that I hadn't on my first (incomplete) reading. Brilliant characte ...more
I've been currently reading this since July . . . and even though I'm about to hit the climax of the novel (I hope), I don't know if I can be bothered. I can't understand why this book just doesn't grip me; but I keep putting it aside for other, more compelling, books.
July 2014
After four years, I picked this book up again. For some reason, I was able to imaginatively immerse myself in the world of the characters in a way that I hadn't on my first (incomplete) reading. Brilliant characte ...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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 stor
...more
Exceptional portrayal of desi culture on Western lands. Exceptional contrast between the two. Exceptional story of two woman developing and undeveloping..
This is a well-told story about Bangladeshi immigrants to England, told from the point of view of a woman, Nazneen, who entered into an arranged marriage with an older man who had been in London for a while. Three lines in the book captures the sense of belonging or lack of belonging, that is the main takeaway: And most of all she thought of what he (Karim, a politically active young man, son of Bangladeshi immigrants) had that she and Hasina (her sister back in Bangladesh) and Chanu (Nazneen's
...more
A rich, detailed novel with an interesting range of varied and fully-developed characters. If I found myself wishing the protagonist was less passive, I at least understood exactly why she was the way she was, which is more than I've managed with some books.
Covering an ambitious span of years - from Nazneen's youth in Bangladesh to early middle-age in the East End of London - Ali's style is absorbing enough that it never feels rushed. The only thing stopping me giving this a 5 is that I felt lik ...more
Covering an ambitious span of years - from Nazneen's youth in Bangladesh to early middle-age in the East End of London - Ali's style is absorbing enough that it never feels rushed. The only thing stopping me giving this a 5 is that I felt lik ...more
When I first picked up this book 10 years ago, I couldn't put it down. I wanted to tell the young wife to stop lusting after the young political firebrand ("You're married, for god sakes!"), but Monica Ali's excellent writing made me empathize with her protagonist, leaving me torn. Nazneen is much younger than her husband and is finding her footing in a new country (England), having been brought from Bangladesh after her arranged marriage. Docile and obedient, as she was trained to be by her cul
...more
I thought the end was a little rushed and maybe clichéd (with the ice skating), but otherwise, I enjoyed the writing and was carried along by this slow, quiet story of a Bangladeshi woman, Nazneen, who moves to England in the 1980s as part of an arranged marriage. There is a parallel story of sorts with her younger sister, Hasina, who stays in Bangladesh, told through letters. But the main focus is Nazneen and her life as a wife, a mother, a lover and a breadwinner living in a council flat in a
...more
I really wanted to enjoy this novel but I didn't. However I read it for book club and we did have a wonderful discussion.
...more
What I liked most about this book was the view it offered into a whole other culture. I have been to Brick Lane and Tower Hamlets many times, and have actually spent some months in Bangladesh, but I obviously don’t have any real understanding what it is to be part of the Bangladeshi community, or indeed an immigrant to these shores. The main strength of this book for me, was bringing that world alive.
Spanning the eighties to the start of the 21st century (building up, inevitably, to 9/11) this c ...more
Spanning the eighties to the start of the 21st century (building up, inevitably, to 9/11) this c ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Feminist Orch...: Brick Lane by Monica Ali | Book Discussion | 15 | 264 | Jul 19, 2018 04:54AM | |
| All About Books: Brick Lane by Monica Ali (Group Fiction, April 2016) | 54 | 54 | Apr 13, 2016 03:31AM | |
| The struggle for identity as an immigrant and the feeling of not belonging | 2 | 25 | Oct 02, 2014 03:07AM | |
| Can anyone suggest other nonfiction in the Indian-expats-in-europe or Muslim-expats-in-europe category? | 11 | 89 | Feb 24, 2013 10:14PM | |
| The Rory Gilmore ...: Brick Lane by Monica Ali | 10 | 123 | Sep 01, 2012 02:37AM |
Readers also enjoyed
Monica Ali is a British writer of Bangladeshi origin. She is the author of Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Ali was voted Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.
She lives in South London with her husband, Simon Torrance, a management consultant. They have two children, Felix (born 1999) and ...more
She lives in South London with her husband, Simon Torrance, a management consultant. They have two children, Felix (born 1999) and ...more
Related Articles
Listen up, because our colleagues here at Goodreads have some excellent audiobook recommendations for you! Of course, the books they've...
44 likes · 25 comments
1 trivia question
More quizzes & trivia...
“The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.”
—
1711 likes
“Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265”
—
65 likes
More quotes…
