Hate is a very strong emotion and as a book lover, I don’t think I have hated any book. There are many that I have not liked and never touched again. For me that is a sure shot sign that I don’t like the book.
One of the very first best sellers I read when I moved to Sydney was Brick Lane by Monica Ali. It is now also been made into a movie starring Tannishtha Chatterjee. I did enjoy the movie but did not enjoy the book – a rarity for me cos it is mostly the other way around.
The book is slow, dreary and depressing. It is about a young bride called Nazneen who is married to a man 20 years her senior and shipped to London as his bride. There in a strange place with a different culture and language , she goes through a struggle to settle in. The book is about her life and how she adapts over time.
May be the author wanted it to be that way so as to show Nazneen’s plight but I did not enjoy the writing nor had any sympathy for the characters in the book.
Usually I am a fan of immigrant stories coz I can relate to them and have read quite a few. Some of them like Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri remain my firm favourite. But this book disappointed me.
It sits in my book case waiting for its turn to be picked and may be one day I will pick it up and read it again. But till then it remains one of the books that I don’t much care for and dislike.