Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali

About the Author

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She has been named by Granta as one of the twenty best young British novelists. "Brick Lane" won Barnes & Noble's Discover Award for New Writers and Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. It was translated into thirty languages. She lives in London with her husband and two children.


Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali
Maybe it's the cooking, maybe it's the recipe
Abstracts from Review By Catherine Taylor
Published: 04 June 2006

Monica Ali's first novel, Brick Lane, was that elusive, enviable thing: a work which attracted critical and commercial plaudits in equal measure. Shortlisted for, among other awards, the Man Booker Prize, it ensured its author a pre-publication place on Granta's much-coveted once-a decade-list of Best of Young British Novelists, while its strong characterisation and vivid narrative made it a hit with the wider reading public. The story of Nazreen, who struggles in her arranged marriage amid the Bengali immigrant community of London's East End was dense, complex and deftly rendered - in short, as neat and accomplished a contemporary tale as one could wish for.

Those eagerly turning to Ali's follow-up, Alentejo Blue, might initially be appeased, but will ultimately feel disappointed. Set in the fictional village of Mamarossa, in Portugal's remote, unspoilt Alentejo region, a self-consciously disparate group of locals, expats, and holidaymakers live, love and sometimes collide in catastrophic ways, but mostly dream and regret.

More a series of montages than a cohesive novel.

Ali's bold style is apparent in flashes, but overall it lacks depth. The locals are just so much background: stereotypes who watch Brazilian soap operas all day or slide into doleful, platitudinous observations. Ali seems more confident with the English characters, but abandons them once their stories ignite a flicker of interest. The landscape is faithfully, if monotonously evoked. It is as if the major themes of Brick Lane - community, displacement, the telling of tales, passion, political undercurrents - have been awkwardly transplanted to another environment, where they cannot flourish. As Joao notes at the beginning of the novel: "The tomatoes too would come early and turn a quick, deceiving red. They would not taste of anything." The same can unfortunately be said of this frustratingly diluted novel.