Quotes of the Day

This review is written by an Asian living in Britain, a point worth mentioning because it may help explain why I found Monica Ali's Brick Lane (Doubleday; 413 pages) as dull as dhal. For those with no personal experience of the book's central milieu — London's Bangladeshi community — it might seem a spicy treat, full of colorful, richly detailed characters and aromatic atmospherics. Indeed most British reviewers have greeted it with effusive praise, many of them endorsing Granta's selection of Ali as one of Britain's 20 best young novelists. But if you've grown up on a diet of Bengali and British-Indian literature, Ali's debut is little more than a lentil broth, warm and easily digested, but predictable and lacking in flavor. And even if this world is brand-new to you, its charms may not transport you all the way to page 413.

Brick Lane tells the story of Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and sent to London in 1985 as the bride of Chanu, a much older man chosen by her father. In Britain, she lives the soporific life of an Asian housewife, raising two daughters (after a son dies in infancy) and attending to her undemanding, if uninspiring, husband. Years — and far too many pages — pass uneventfully before Nazneen shakes off her torpor to conduct an affair with a younger man slightly less feckless than her husband. Eventually, she dumps both men and strikes out on her own, but so timidly that her independence seems doomed.

Nazneen's life is contrasted with that of her sister Hasina back in Bangladesh, whose story is told through her letters to Nazneen. This hoary device undermines what might have been a more interesting tale: unlike Nazneen, Hasina's life is full of event — she runs away from home to marry, then flees her abusive husband and becomes a prostitute. But her letters, while long on uninteresting detail, are cryptic on the tragedies of her life. And for some reason Hasina's letters, translated from Bengali, are presented in absurdly ungrammatical English; but when Nazneen, who has no more education than her sister, composes a reply, it's in flawless, if simple, prose. A large chunk of the middle of the book is given over to Hasina's rambling correspondence, and its chief function is to mark the passing of years: a clunky effort to move the story forward.

The absence of narrative punch is compounded by a paucity of interesting characters. Brick Lane seems to be populated entirely by clichés, one-dimensional people taken straight from a textbook of Indo-Anglian Lit. Nazneen is docile and, until the final few pages, dutiful, never speaking her mind, never standing up to her weakling of a husband. Chanu is the stereotypical first-generation Asian immigrant, holding on to fantasies of his native land's historic glories so he can feel superior to the people of his adopted country. Their doctor friend Ali also clings to his Bengali heritage, and is profoundly embarrassed by his inability to prevent his wife and daughter from becoming Westernized. Nazneen's children and other second-generation Bangladeshis are the obligatory rebels — they all listen to Asian-rap DJs, fall into bad company, become junkies or run away from home. Even the mealymouthed money-lender and the neighborhood busybody are staples of Subcontinental literature, although Ali fuses them together in the unusually female form of Mrs. Islam.

As a result, it is almost impossible to feel for these people when they are beset by their many, mostly minor, tragedies. It's hard even to feel sorry for poor Hasina when she gets so little sympathy from her creator: Ali leaves her story unexplained and incomplete. Hasina, too, is a stereotype, the innocent rustic who goes to the city to find love and happiness but is exploited and degraded by rapacious urban men.

And since it follows that clichés can only talk in clichés, Ali's characters spout the requisite quirky homilies: "A blind uncle is better than no uncle"; "Rubbing ashes on your face doesn't make you a saint"; "The jackfruit is still on the tree but already he is oiling his moustache." Chanu, in particular, seems to construct entire monologues out of aphorisms. In Bengali folk theater, that's a tried and tested comedic technique. Here, it's tired and tiring. If you're looking for something with genuine spice, you're better off with Hanif Kureishi's back catalog — or at the curry houses on the real Brick Lane.

• BOBBY GHOSH
• Monica Ali's debut novel is a bland stew of Bangladeshi clichés