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October 25, 2004
Book Bites #5
I read Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane because of James Wood’s assessment, first published in the New Republic, now reprinted in his essay collection The Irresponsible Self. I’ve enjoyed Wood’s book immensely because he analyzes aspects of craft with an almost moral fervor. And I could not agree more about Ali’s “unobtrusive patterning” and her conveyance of the story “in units of characters rather than wattage of ‘style’,” though I was equally taken by Ali’s skill in sustaining a compelling third person-point of view closely aligned with her main character for more than 400 pages.
That main character is Nazneen, a Bangladeshi village girl shipped to grimy East London’s council flats to live with an arranged husband twice her age. Eventually she finds herself in an affair, but the novel is about fate on a rather philosophic level—whether one submits to fate or shapes it—and not adultery. And its fascination lies in the gradual, utterly convincing dissolution of Nazneen’s naivete, which happens so subtly that you wonder, like a nostalgic parent, how all the milestones blurred together. Told through Nazneen’s compassionate eyes, “Brick Lane” is a novel of gentleness and warmth.
Posted by Rachel at October 25, 2004 02:33 PM
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