I LOVED THIS BOOK

Brick Lane is a wonderfully rich first novel from Monica Ali which explores life within the Bangladeshi community on an East council estate for a young woman married to a much older man. For me this book was passionate, insightful, funny as hell in places whilst maintaining a real sense of truth, the reason I think so many people related to the text and the book ended up being transferred to screen. I haven’t seen the film because when I love a book at as much as this one I am almost always disappointed with the film version.

It has been a while since I read it although I do remember vividly Chanu and his wife Nazneen, the young woman he marries by arrangement. Ms Ali takes us through this wonderful narrative only in the head of Nazneen, the reader only ever knows what she thinks right through to the end of the book. We get to know Chanu by his outward mannerisms, his physical appearance, his self importance and the irritating demands he places on his wife and children. He is comical and at the beginning of the novel you cannot help but resent him yet as the story unfolds you do begin to take pity on him for his set in his ways quirks, I certainly warmed to the character so cleverly weaved by Ali, just glad I’m not married to someone like him.

Not surprisingly Nazneen meets a handsome young man Karim and begins an affair yet this is not a love triangle in the traditional sense it is more a glimpse at the two way mirror that is life, wherever you are from the good and bad in every character and nature. I found it to be a totally compelling and brilliantly crafted work of art, well deserving of all the recognition and praise it has received.