Ms. Hen reviews Brick Lane

Brick Lane

Monica Ali

Scribner

2003

 

 

Ms. Hen decided to read BRICK LANE because a rooster friend recommended it to her, and she is always fascinated by immigrant stories, especially Asian immigrant stories. Ms. Hen loves to read about people who are completely different than she is, possibly because she understands the world is bigger than what she knows.

 

This novel is about a young woman from Bangladesh, Nanzeen, who moves to London to be with the man her father chose for her. She doesn’t like leaving her sister and the village of their youth. When she is in London, she struggles to get by; her husband does not let her work at first, and she does not leave the flat that much. She makes friends with some of the neighboring women, but she is unhappy.

 

One thing that helps her get by is the letters from her sister. She misses her sister more than her country. Her sister gets into trouble when she runs off to marry a man and doesn’t tell anyone, and gets into further trouble when he leaves her. Nanzeen’s husband talks endlessly about returning home, he is a man who talks big, but his pontifications don’t always amount to much. Their two daughters are terrified of going to Bangladesh, and don’t want to go. Nanzeen has a younger lover who wants to marry her, but she does not know what she should do at first, but she decides eventually.

 

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of the last one she read, GIRL IN TRANSLATION, in the way that it’s about an immigrant, and even though they are different, they have a similar yearning for someone: Nanzeen for her sister, and Kimberly for her father who is gone. There’s a chance Nanzeen will never see her sister again. Even though her husband is a windbag, he has a good heart, and he wants Nanzeen to be happy, and he believes returning to Bangladesh and seeing her sister again would make her happy.

 

Chickens abound on these pages. There are so many! Ms. Hen was tickled. Nanzeen imagines the village where she grew up, “For a couple of beats, she closed her eyes and smelled the jasmine that grew close to the well, heard the chickens scratching the hot earth, felt the sunlight that warmed her cheeks and made dancing patterns on her eyelids.” Ms. Hen thinks this is a beautiful description that involves chickens. A lot of poetic flourishes are in this novel, and it contains many colorful descriptions. The author has a melodious voice that helps the reader imagine the places and situations she wants to convey.

 

Ms. Hen thinks this is a beautiful novel. It’s about a woman who does not have a lot of power in her life, but she works with what she has. Some people don’t have choices to make, they are victims of destiny, but they take a turn and do what they want to do, and try to take matters into their own hands. That’s what Nanzeen does. She wants to life live on her terms, and she tries to control what happens to her in the end.