'Brick Lane' by Monica Ali

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

'Brick Lane' is one of these books that I'd heard a lot about before I bought it - it had a lot of good reviews, was turned into a film, inspired protests from the Bangladeshi community and provoked a minor contraversy regarding the authenticity of the author and whether it was reasonable for an Asian writer from a fairly western and assimilated background to write about first generation Bangladeshi immigrants.

And so I read it, and having done so I can see why so many people liked it - it is a well written, thoughtful, insightful book in which Ali is incredibly good at not creating bad guys, or cardboard cut outs, but a lot of different men and women trying to do their best. I also really enjoyed seeing the east end of London - which I know well - through immigrant eyes. It was really interesting to look at the city I live in in a different way. Some of the things she said also reminded me of how I felt about England when I came back after living in Nepal for six months - I remember how big and grey and concrete everything felt, and how everyone seemed to move so quickly and looked so big and doughy, and I had only been away from England for six months!

Yet for all that, 'Brick Lane' failed to connect with me. I think a big part of the problem for me was the sheer scale of the novel. It starts in the early 80s in Tower Hamlets, and runs through until the present day. That's an awful lot of time to cover, with the main character starting off as an 18 year old girl who has just arrived in England, and ending as a mature woman with two teenage daughters. I think that's an ambitious structure for a novel, and one which I think mostly worked, but did leave me feeling a little lost behind at times, as it jumped about.

I've just finished this book, and I'm still unsure if I enjoyed it. I didn't dislike it, and I'm sure a lot of people will really enjoy it. It just didn't satisfy me, and I felt at times as if I'd have got as much out of it by just dipping in and out, and picking out bits of the descriptions that appealed.

It isn't a bad book, but I think if I had my time again I'll move it to the back of my pile and save it for a slow and rainy day.

Comments

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think you're onto something. The huge scope of the book is ambitious and may either feel rich and full or overly crowded, depending on what any given reader likes.

However, I think that Ali was quite consciously trying to write a big-scope book to counter the kajillion "Aga saga" books about "X decades in the life of an English family" (which always means a white family, usually English born of English ancestry). So I don't think it's a failure of her project as such, but not everyone digs the "sweeping saga" structure.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is what you meant to say, but if it is, you're totally right and Ali did write a Bangladeshi Aga saga - even the 'woman gets married, has children, finds herself and gains independence' is a narrative I've read in a dozen books about rural white middle class English women, and it's not something that I have ever really clicked with then.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, that was what I meant to say, but you said it much more concisely.

That was what I really dug about Brick Lane--it recast a lot of the tropes I've read in Joanna Trollope et al. from a different point of view.