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Magazine
FICTION
A woman uprooted
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Monica Ali's Brick Lane is contemporary writing at its best, says KESHAV DESIRAJU.
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AP
NAZNEEN and Hasina are sisters separated by geography and fate, and bound together by history and an uncertain ability to think for themselves. Both are cast adrift, innocents abroad; Nazneen in a downmarket London tenement, tied to a would-be Dacca grandee forced into petty clerkdom, and Hasina, of the "pomegranate-pink lips, a face that made your breath catch, and a flick of the shoulders that said she would not wait", in a succession of messy situations involving unsuitable men. Both are tied to the memory of their mother, "Amma", who finally brought the long silences in her life to an end by gratefully impaling herself on a spear. Brick Lane is their story.
It is a story that Monica Ali tells beautifully. She is the latest of the growing group of British novelists of colonial origin; a wildly imaginative and inventive group that grapples with the clash of cultures, from Hanif Kureishi and Meera Syal to Zadie Smith. These are writers who bring a cool Western sensibility to their understanding of alienation, and of belonging, and of loss. In addition, an elegant writing style unknown to most writers of Indo-Anglian fiction. This is clearly because for Monica Ali, and others of her background and generation, England is `home', and not Khulna or Kolkata, for all that fanciful memories of the old country have overshadowed their lives.
Those memories are however invoked continuously through the novel, without fuss. There are no italicised references. Nazneen's aunt Mumtaz is quite simply just that, and not Aunt, or Pishi, or the Esteemed Elder Aunt so favoured by old-fashioned translators. Nazneen lives and functions in "Gaon Bangla" but there is nothing remotely native about the language of the novel, and we think her thoughts without it seeming like an effete translation from a Bengali romance. And when Monica Ali evokes the seasons of her ancestral land, it is Barsa and Sarat, Hemanto and Basanto, a powerful and completely natural evocation.
Monica Ali tells Hasina's part of the story through her letters to her sister in pidgin Bengali, rendered into pidgin English. A loving and generous soul, she reveals little of the true horror of her situation. "You say you send money soon but sister I am not in need. Allah provides. Write me longer letter that is what I need". She even manages to retain some of her natural exuberance, and the edge that comes with being the daughter of the second richest man in the village. Who else could write, for instance, of a friend, "She is nice woman but from Noakhali"?
Nazneen lives a closed and empty life. Chanu, her husband, is a muddled and affectionate man, living in a near total state of denial. Other immigrants are her only contacts with the world. There are greedy Mrs. Islam and her delinquent sons; "I thank God for giving me sons, but why such sons as these?" There is Razia, delivered from a brutal husband by a merciful accident, only to be brutalised by her son, there are Nazneen's daughters, sullen adolescent Shahana and Bibi, and there is the weird Dr. Azad.
And then there is Karim; British, brash, full of attitude, and, God be praised, young. He is also deeply confused and veers perilously between the religiosity of his upbringing and the longing to be free. Karim introduces the second line to the story, the tensions inherent in a multi-racial society. Nazneen is totally out of sync with Karim's lifestyle and worldview, or that of the whole new generation of British Asians, but, inevitably, she drifts into an affair. When the story ends, we find her alone with her daughters, and looking with shy confidence at the future. Her husband has returned to Bangladesh, still muddled; Karim has vanished, probably also to Bangladesh, reclaimed by his Islamic past, but not before Nazneen has decisively shaken off his control over her emotions. Hasina, by this time, has eloped with yet another rogue.
It is a gifted novelist, indeed, who can make ordinary events come alive, and who can interest the reader in ordinary, even dull, characters. Brick Lane does not have a defined story line, or a plot; indeed, there is no story other than that of a woman uprooted. In that it draws together the old and the new, the universal tale and the tale never told, Brick Lane is contemporary writing at its best.
Brick Lane, Monica Ali, Doubleday, 2003, £10.99
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