Brick Lane

the picture is of the real Brick Lane, in London.  the street of cafés, shops, food stalls, for which this wonderful novel is named.  it's another novel of the immigrant experience, this time of Muslim Bangladeshis in London.  it is also, hard as i find it to believe, a first novel.  it caused quite a stir in Britain, putting its author, Monica Ali, on the Granta list of best young British novelists before the book was even published.  i have two reviews (here and here) from the London paper The Guardian, saving myself from making three or four episodic entries about the book.  they are raves, and i agree with every word. in case you skip the review links, i'm going to quote this portion of Natasha Walter's words:

       "Beyond this moving portrait of the domestic world, I cannot think of another novel in which the politics of our times are caught with such easy vividness.  So many novelists either ignore politics altogether, or else they treat politics as journalists do, by making arguments rather than creating situations.  But here, everything political that the characters say or do seems to spring from their own hopes and disappointments, so that - even when they are reacting to September 11 or the Oldham riots - it never feels as if Ali is simply using them to illustrate a point." 

 these people are so very real, and most of the book takes place in the "domestic world" referred to above.  a young woman comes to London from a small village, in an arranged marriage to an older man.  but not just any woman.  it is Nazneen, whom i promise you will grow to love.