By: Jhumpa Lahiri Publisher: Knopf Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Knopf Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 352 Publication Date: April 01, 2008 Release Date: April 01, 2008
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.
Unaccustomed Earth is rich withJhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
I love Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories I thought this book was one of the best collection of short stories that I have read, particularly in the context of an immigrant's perspective.
What I particularly enjoy about Jhumpa is that she writes about ordinary people and examines their tensions and anxieties, their joys and disappointments. Her characters are multi dimensional, and she is able to show that ordinary persons are interesting and even fascinating. In an era when literature, film and media is full of abnormal (improbable) characters, it is refreshing to find an artist who is able to appreciate and elevate the ordinary, and imbue it with extraordinary fullness and interest.
Of course from an immigrant's point of view, she fully explores the uncertainty, the aloneness, the ambiguity that many of us feel because of our lack of not being fully at home. She expresses the tensions we experience and does it with great compassion and gentleness; seldom providing answers, but always questioning and probing
A wonderful experience that I would recommend to everyone
Lahirism I used to think the mid-point between optimism and pessimism was realism--before reading the ineffable work of Jhumpa Lahiri in this collection of short stories. There exists no term for what she achieves in these delicately sliced portions of intersecting lives. It is not that no one accomplishes all that seems possible for them, not that no one is as ultimately afflicted as they could be, although these two outcomes hold true in every tale. It is that her characters and their situations (which include the other characters) seem to evolve to a precise center between the worst that could have happened to them and the best.
There are other apparent mid-points attained by Lahiri. Characters are actors and acted upon just about the same. They do good and ill, what's loyal and what betrays, the honorable and the faithless in equal measure. They alternately evoke our sympathy and dismay, satisfaction and frustration, solidarity and disdain. Call it "lahirism."
You'll find nothing extraordinary here, no excess of courage or cowardice, no belly laughs or eyes cried out, no fierce wind or fiery sunlight. You will find life, of course, from conception to death--sometimes planned, sometimes accidental, at moments unwelcome, at moments embraced.
The stories float on pitch perfect prose, with descriptions invading the plotline like soft apologies, strangely placed and always well-timed. She does not open her stories in the beginning; she opens them organically, like a flower, throughout the telling, so that her last words are as much a beginning as her first. No sentence is meant to be screamed or whispered. Revelations do not descend upon you; you grow toward them.
And that is the final genius of lahirism. Your growth toward revelation continues long after the story ends, as you ponder the choices made and the incursions endured. Jhumpa Lahiri's delicate flowers continue unfolding just as her characters' lives are presumed to continue unfolding, and that is when you realize that her seeming reach for the quintessential mid-point is an illusion. There is nothing symmetrical about life. Or death. It is one constant, aching, implacable surprise.
This burgeoning treasure of an author is someone to shout about, even though her luminous prose would never think of raising its voice.
Lahiri shows her growth as a writer Lahiri's stories are described as a slow burn. This is most evident in this collection. Each story seemingly plods on, but at the end of each one, the reader sees it all come together. I absolutely loved the final story, which was more like a novella. It perfectly described the joys and pitfalls of illicit romance. I felt as if this collection took on cultural identity in a more subtle way than Lahiri's two other books. The characters are all Bengali, but they are somehow also more American than the characters in 'Interpreter of Maladies' and 'The Namesake'. I don't know if this is a function of Lahiri growing as a writer or if it was done intentionally. Either way, she's done a bang up job.
I was sad to leave the characters Unaccustomed Earth is a wonderful collection of stories that you are so sad to leave at the end of each one. A book that doesn't leave you. I am so happy that I found it.
An Unaccustomed Joy When Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning volume of short stories, "The Interpreter of Maladies" was published, I didn't read it. For one thing, I'd just read Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" and Rohinton Mistry's "Family Matters," and while I absolutely loved both books, I was suffering from a surfeit of Indian fiction, at least at that time. But more than that, I gave "The Interpreter of Maladies" a pass because of all the hype. I've been let down by hype in the past. More than once. Surely the book couldn't be that good, I told myself. Surely Lahiri's prose wasn't that sparkling and fresh.
When "Unaccustomed Earth," Lahiri's third book of longer short stories was released, I'd "sort of" decided to give it a pass as well. I have plenty to read and didn't really need anything new. However, I was shopping the other day and there was the book, lying on a table right in front of me. I couldn't resist. But please keep in mind, I approached the book with a mind to dislike it.
Suffice to say, I was astounded at the beauty and grace in Lahiri's stories. No, the plots aren't much to speak of. Nothing earth shattering really happens. These are just normal people leading normal lives. Yes, they're Bengali-Americans, but so what? What's really important is that they could be Irish or Russian or German or English. Lahiri writes about the universality of the human experience, not about experiences that are unique to Bengalis or Bengali-Americans. I've never been to India, and I know few people of Indian descent, but I related totally to the characters in "Unaccustomed Earth." I felt their pain, their loneliness, their striving for happiness. Lahiri, I learned, writes about the human heart, and the human heart, I think, is the same the world over. It doesn't matter if one's Bengali, South African, Dutch, or Chinese.
Lahiri's prose is spare and unadorned, but I was so impressed by its tremendous emotional depth and understanding, as well as Lahiri's unwavering eye for detail. All her characters came to life for me, even the minor ones.
Personally, I can't understand criticism of Lahiri because she writes about Bengali-Americans. Doesn't Alice Munro write about Canadians? Doesn't William Trevor write about the Irish? Did Chekhov write about Russians and Eudora Welty about people of the American South? No, I wouldn't be able to read Lahiri every day. But neither would I be able to read Alice Munro or Chekhov every day. That takes nothing away from their writing or their mastery.
Though I liked some of the stories better than others, I think this was just a matter of personal preference. I didn't find the stories uneven. I didn't think one was weaker than the others or one significantly stronger, another testament to Lahiri's power as a writer.
If I have any criticism of Lahiri at all, it's that she doesn't include more humor in her stories. Oh, I don't mean she should write comic stories. Far from it. But life, someone reminded me the other day, is both comic and tragic, and to exclude one in favor of the other is to diminish truth. I'd like to see a little, not a lot, just a little, understated humor in Lahiri's stories.
If you're new to Lahiri's writing, "Unaccustomed Earth" isn't a bad place to start. These are rich, deeply emotional stories, the stories of an emotionally mature writer, but they're also very, very restrained and understated. As for me, I'll be moving on to Lahiri's first novel, "The Namesake," and this time, I won't approach it with anything but admiration and respect.
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