Book Review

By Derryll White

Ali, Monica (2003). Brick Lane.

“A man’s character is his fate.” – Heraclitus.

This Monica Ali’s first novel. She was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and grew up in England, now living in London. The novel looks very clearly at the Bangladeshi community moved from small rural villages to foreign and urban London.

Fate will decide! Ali is very clear early on in this work that destiny rules. Nazneen in the beginning struggles for life as a premature baby. She grows, loses her mother unexplainably and enters an arranged marriage. Nazneen accepts that she has no control. If she asks for and expects nothing, then how can she be disappointed? Her sister’s voice whispers, “If you ask for nothing, you might get nothing!”

Have you lived long in a foreign country? Nazneen’s story is amazingly evocative of that struggle between what we remember and what we have, in a foreign land. Moreso because she is caught in a ghetto of language and gender ideas that shuts down normal escape.

Monica Ali is amazingly humble and graceful in inhabiting Nazneen’s mind and will. She takes the reader into the turmoil of a Bengali woman’s life and prospects. It is hard for me, a Canadian man, to imagine. So I thank Ms. Ali for the invitation to a world I really didn’t know existed. To think that a husband might be ‘good’ because he only broke a few bones when he beat his wife is hard for me to comprehend. She is sensitive to the Bangladesh community and, to my mind, does it honour even as she lucidly points out the problems.

This is a novel of belief, self-sufficiency, empowerment. The writer is very careful to construct dialogue, narration and description in a most believable manner. The reader is left thinking “My God! There are good things yet in this world.”

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Excerpts from the novel

ROLES – “If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.”

HISTORY – “If you have a history, you see, you have a pride. The whole world was going to Bengal to do trade. Sixteenth century and seventeenth century. Dhaka was the home of every damn thing? It was us. All the Dutch and Portuguese and French and British queuing up to buy.”

CHILDREN – “Yes. Then she wants a year off.” She spoke the words as if they were two turds dangling from the end of a stick.

“What is it?” asked Nazneen. “Year off?”

“Before going to university. She wants to spend one year doing nothing.”

OPTIONS – “Nothing like they couldn’t stop it, if they wanted to, Everyone knows the dealers.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “It’s not hard. The dealers are the ones the kids look up to. With the flash cars and all the gold. But, know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking —-.” He shook his head as if it could not be true. “I’m thinking as long as they’re on the scag, they stay away from religion. And the government – it’s more scared of Islam than heroin.”

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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