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Brick Lane, Monica Ali’s first novel, sold a great many copies and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was also criticised by those guardians of the public conscience who write letters to newspapers on the grounds of cultural tourism. Despite her impeccable Bangladeshi origins, these detractors alleged, the Oxford-educated Ms Ali was clearly unqualified to write about the realities of life in the polyglot East End. No doubt one or two of the same criticisms will be levelled at her choice of a sequestered Portuguese village as the setting for novel number two.
For all the modesty of its style and some highly uncontentious subject matter, Alentejo Blue is a risky enterprise. The risk lies in Ali’s decision to construct what is not so much a novel with a large and interconnected cast as a collection of short stories whose characters stray occasionally onto the margins of each other’s lives.
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