A Clear Choice

With the publication of Brick Lane, Monica Ali rightly established herself as one of the sharpest young voices of the immigrant experience in Britain and earned herself a spot on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The recent release of the film Brick Lane has brought this fine work to light again.

The novel traces eighteen-year-old Nazneen’s marriage to Chanu, a man more than twice her age, through to her sexual awakening with another man and its aftermath. While the subject matter—arranged marriage and its shackles—is trite, its treatment is anything but. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, Ali is a keen observer of her surroundings and writes with remarkable precision. But her wit is shrewder; her canvass, much larger. Ali doesn’t limit herself to quotidian emotions and identity anxieties. Like a quintessential nineteenth century novelist, she explores, via an immensely engaging story, individuals, communities and the world beyond.

  Throughout much of the story, Nazneen is confronted by some of the conflicts one might expect of someone in her situation: simultaneous disdain and occasional appreciation for her husband, the push and pull between her devotion to Islam and her Western surroundings. Initially feared to be a stillborn, as a baby Nazneen was “left to Fate” and eventually “called back to earth.” Having repeatedly heard this story growing up, she carries an attitude of fatalism into her marriage, at once questioning but quickly accepting her lot in life. Initially she considers but restrains herself from asserting any control on events.

Nazneen’s desires are acknowledged, but her containment of them is not labored on; her mind is preoccupied with other matters. “She had to concentrate hard to get through each day. Sometimes she felt as if she held her breath the entire evening. It was up to her to balance the competing needs [of Chanu and her daughters], to soothe here and urge there, and push the day along to its close. When she failed… she felt dizzy with responsibility… It took all her energy. It took away longing.” When she meets Karim—a young Muslim radical who brings her some much needed, profitable tailoring work—the longing comes to surface “not so much with passion but with ferocity.”

Nazneen’s desires occupy a small part of this weighty novel. The subplot regarding her sister Hasina—who, unlike Nazneen, takes matters into her own hands and escapes her village of Gouripur with a man of her choosing—gives the novel an added dimension. Reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry’s style in A Fine Balance, this secondary character’s circumstances (Hasina is eventually left on her own and forced into prostitution) delicately sheds some perspective on Nazeen’s plight. It is surprising and odd that Hasina writes letters to Nazneen in broken English—one wonders why she would write to Nazneen in English at all—but this style succeeds in emphasizing Hasina’s despair. Her storyline highlights the human need not so much to hope, but simply to yearn.

Another surprising aspect of the novel is Nazneen’s highly articulate disdain toward Chanu. Told from Nazneen’s point of view, the novel describes Chanu as someone who held words to his mouth like gold and tossed them around like a fool. He is someone who, in his anorak, “looked like a kachuga turtle…green shell, black legs, scuttling across the estate.” He waggles his head above rolls of fat that hang low from his stomach. While Nazneen’s small insurgencies against Chanu are logical—she presumably senses that she is not treated well, her wifely duties including the unpleasant task of cutting Chanu’s corns—her criticisms seem out of place considering her fatalistic upbringing and (lack of) an education that teaches her to question the world and her role in it. Nazneen’s observations later in the novel, after she has met Karim and has spent many years in the company of Chanu and the defiant Razia, make more sense. She suspects that Dr. Azad gives Chanu the money to return to Bangladesh because he wanted to “get rid of this ridiculous man who claimed him for a kindred spirit,” not understanding the depth of their friendship. What’s remarkable is that, in spite of Nazneen’s aversion, Chanu comes across as an utterly sympathetic character. Though paralyzed by his own thoughts and plans, he is well-meaning. That he is bumbling and child-like, bewildered by the world—and perhaps also by Nazneen’s secret—makes him altogether amiable.

Like any other novel about an affair, the final outcome (will the protagonist leave her husband or not? what will be the consequences?) is key. In this case, Ali’s treatment of the outcome is as layered as Nazneen’s character. Some of the final events of the book are a bit pat and predictable for a novel of this magnitude: Nazneen stands up to the manipulative elderly loan shark Mrs. Islam; she declares, “I will say what happens to me. I will be the one,” thereby, at last, making a choice and shaping her own fate. Regardless, the ending is emotionally resonant, especially Dr. Azad’s exploration of the simplicities and complexities of love: “What I did not know… is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don’t notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand.”

The controversy over filming Brick Lane is just. The Bangladeshi community it depicts is unsophisticated, and some of its events, absurd (Razia’s husband, for instance, is crushed to death by seventeen frozen cows). It is a community in which gossip abounds, thoughts of suicide are not uncommon, and rebellion is embraced. In spite of its caustic overtones, Brick Lane is a deeply rewarding, thought-provoking read. “If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men,” said Amma to Nazneen as a child. But whether or not Nazneen directly poses questions, her story does—mostly notably, perhaps, about the hidden power of silence and endurance.  

Sangeeta Mehta has worked as a book editor at Simon & Schuster and Little, Brown. She is currently a freelance editor living in New York City.

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