Throughout the book, there is a persistent undertow of back home. One of the questions of the novel is how much of her subtlety will ever be allowed a voice. He is a magnificent piece of characterisation, as is Nazneen: a woman uneducated but perceptive, whose intelligence is in danger of being smothered by her own ignorance and sense of propriety. Chanu is pompous and kindly, full of plans, none of which ever come to fruition, and then of resentment at Ignorant Types who don't promote him or understand his quotations from Shakespeare or his Open University race, ethnicity and class module. The most vivid image of the marriage is of her cutting her husband's corns, a task she seems required to perform with dreadful regularity. Nazneen is sent from Bangladesh to Britain at the age of 18 to be married to Chanu, knowing only two words of English - sorry and thank you - and not a soul. Plus it's a meditation on fate and free will. Brick Lane has everything: richly complex characters, a gripping story and an exploration of a community that is so quintessentially British that it has given us our national dish, but of which most of us are entirely ignorant. Now that we have a chance to read it for ourselves, this does not seem in the least surprising.
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