Right now, I really want to talk about a book I had to read for my University course entitled "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003.
First of all if this type of sh*t novel that is being shortlisted for a literature prize then I seriously worry about the quality of the prize itself and I worry about where the future of literature is going to go. Now the novel is not entirely without its merits but overall it's a dull story with so many pot holes within it that, in my mind, it is a literary failure.
To start with it's a story of a young Bengali woman, Nazneen, who is chosen to be a wife for a Bengali man living in London, and it shows her life as a young wife living at home with not much to do whilst her husband tries to achieve a job promotion at his work. The novel is set immediately prior to the American 9/11 event and it makes references to it whilst also making the racial tensions existing within London more prevalent for the local community. She embarks on an affair, and her husband makes the decision to leave England and return back to his home town and Nazneen ultimately strikes out to become her own woman and she separates from her husband....Sounds like something out of Eastenders in all honesty. Nothing much really happens and the characters are so flat and boring that I wondered if I could even gather any sort of enthusiasm for the developments in her life. It turns out, I couldn't.
Now don't get me wrong, the major post colonial issues are very important to consider when reading this text; there are the racial tensions between white lower classes and the Bengali community as well as the insights into the Islamic religion. For an average white person, like myself, it was a window into another culture without appearing to be too nosey about it but in all honesty Monica Ali really sh*ts on Islam! Her portrayal of it depicted women as being trapped in a system where they have no control and I personally don't believe that this is true at all (even though, I must admit, I have no intimate knowledge at all- I just think these are the 'Daily Mail' type conceptions). However, I think the topic of religion is a risky issue and will move away from it now.
The characters are flat and the readers gain little insight into their development; its like someone mentioning briefly a detail of their lives but forgets that it was ever mentioned. So frustrating to say the least! There is also the fundamental issue of language. This may seem an odd thing to say but literally throughout the novel many references are shown to the readers of Nazneen trying to speak and learn English (which her husband, incidentally, refuses to allow her to do so which is perhaps because of her position as a woman) and then the readers are presented with letters from her sister who still lives in her home town in Bangladesh. The letters are presented in a grammatically incorrect way and serves to indicate the illiteracy....yet what a paradox that the narrative is written is perfect English when the first person narrator is unable to even speak English! That type of narrative device only works if the readers accept that there is a duality of language being spoken. If that's the case, why even have the letters written in this way? Its just frustrating that the author is hammering home all the stereotypes of what is effectively her own community and it does not show the Bengali community in a positive way at all. No wonder there was such an uproar about it! Even more so when film crews tried to make a film (eurgh!) out of this!
The author seems to forget that diversity is worth celebrating! So overall, this book is not something I would recommend but I'd love to know of other opinions as mine might be seen to be very narrow minded. But seriously there is nothing exciting in the prose at all!
No comments:
Post a Comment