Monica Ali's debut novel, Brick Lane, is one of those modern classics (at nearly 20 years old!) that has been on my radar for a longtime, but which I'd never got around to reading. Hearing an ABC radio book club episode where they discussed it prompted me to pluck it from the library.
I can understand why Brick Lane caused such a stir at the time -- it was shortlisted for the Booker, and has remained a reader favourite. It's a rich, sprawling novel that takes us inside the Bangladeshi community in London, around the area of the titular street, and follows Nazneen, brought over as practically a child bride at 18 for pompous Chanu. Nazneen's origin story is that when she was born she was 'left to her Fate' and at the beginning of the novel she is quite passive, accepting whatever decisions others make on her behalf. But as the story progresses, her life marked with horrible tragedy, she begins to take control and make decisions of her own.
Ali is known for intertwining politics with the personal stories of her characters, and we see this with Brick Lane, which incorporates the 9/11 attacks and London race riots. I was really touched by the relationship between Nazneen and Chanu, where a complex tenderness grows between them, even as Nazneen seems to be turning her back on their marriage. The final resolution was maybe a little too neat, given the deftly drawn complications that have come before, but hey, I'm not going to complain about a (more or less) happy ending.
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