In 2003, she was selected as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" by Granta based on her unpublished manuscript; her debut novel, Brick Lane, was published later that year.

[10] The Observer described Chanu as "one of the novel's foremost miracles: twice her age, with a face like a frog, a tendency to quote Hume and the boundless doomed optimism of the self-improvement junkie, he is both exasperating and, to the reader at least, enormously loveable.

"[11] Geraldine Bedell wrote in The Observer that the "most vivid image of the marriage is of her [Nazneen] cutting her husband's corns, a task she seems required to perform with dreadful regularity.

[Her husband] 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.

thought Ali had negatively portrayed people from the Sylhet Division, as they constitute the majority of the Bangladeshi immigrants living in the Brick Lane community.

[14]Greer criticised Monica Ali's "lack of authenticity", as she had never spent much time in the Brick Lane community, and no longer spoke the Bengali language fluently.

"[17] In a review in The Times Literary Supplement,[18] novelist Tash Aw described it as a "rich, sensitive and gloriously entertaining novel...brimming with extremely funny moments of excruciating social comedy."

[19] David Sexton in the Sunday Times concurred, describing Love Marriage as: 'Enormously satisfying in its inventions and observations, and its exploration of cultural diversity in Britain.

[24] In 2020, Ali was appointed Patron of Hopscotch Women's Centre,[25] a charity that was originally set up by Save the Children to support ethnic minority families who had come to join their partners in the UK.

Subtitled "Britain's leading ladies", the campaign saw Ali appear alongside British women from various fields, including pop singer Ellie Goulding, double Olympic gold medal-winning boxer Nicola Adams, and actress Helen Mirren.