I have been wanting read Monica Ali’s Brick Lane since I heard about it a long time ago. I don’t remember from where or who, but it could be from my school’s principal, a person I look up to. Warning: Spoilers ahead 

 

These are what my initial and only notes looked like: immigrant Bengali experience, sibling relationship, accurate portrayal of Bengali husband, how they speak to their wives and general Bangu marriages. 

 

Here are my thoughts after finishing reading it. 

 

I felt giddy at the first few pages, it was probably the first time I was seeing a picture of certain kind of Bangladeshi village lifestyle being painted in English words.However, as I started reading further, none of the characters made me want to hold them, none of the incidents *really* made me want to turn pages. 

 

It was excruciatingly slow. Sure, the author has good grasp in weaving words together. But seriously who needs to read about the shortcomings of Chanu and his corns for 200 pages? 

 

According to the Internet, this is the first English acclaimed piece of work about the Bangladeshi immigrant life in the UK. How well equipped was the writer to portray this though? I could not find any proof of the author having experienced immigrant life at the socioeconomic level sketched in the book. Even though this doubt made me uneasy throughout, Ali’s writing made up for it to some extent. 

 

Personally, it did not make too much sense that Nazneen, a woman brought up in an uber-conservative society

suddenly jumps into an affair with a younger man

. The fact that it was implied that breaking this ‘rule’ opened up a world of opportunities for the protagonist also did not sit quite right with me. 

 

There were handful of ‘quotable’ or things of substance in the book in Hasina’s letters to her sister. Glimpses of Hasina’s life provided some life to this novel. However, the author butchered that as well by conveying them in broken English. I am unsure of what symbolism this was meant to sketch. 

 

Nazneen’s confrontation with Mrs. Islam

was quite out of the blue in terms of her character as well. However, it was probably the most interesting bit of the entire storyline. Also, humans are complicated beings, it is literally possible for us to do whatever we like and no one is actually 100% sure about things they will decide to do. 

 

I feel like I did not enjoy the book as much because I like fast-paced works unless the author has Arundhati Roy’s level of mastery of language. It was more character-driven rather than plot-driven, so not a lot was happing for the most part. When things did happen, they felt rushed to me. For example, the ending. It was what, many would call cliched.  

 

The entire point of the book was Nazneen coming to the realisation and accepting that she can take her life in her own hands, everything is not up to Fate as she had believed her whole life. This could possibly come off as women in oppressive systems to be only suffering because they *refuse* to see things differently. Which is a wide misconception but we shall dive into that some other day. I did agree with the portrayal of the average cishet Muslim Bengali husband for the most part. 

 

Am I disappointed? You could say. But then again, I hadn’t really read any reviews of it, so I more or less dived in blind. I finished it because I really wanted to. So, I’d only recommend it to people willing to push through.