Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Interpreter of Maladies
Book Review: interpreter of maladies
Summary: 4 Stars
It was a great little book. Easy to read. A bit different in a good way. I would recommend this book.Book Review: A Limited Set of Elements
Summary: 4 Stars
The amazing thing about Jhumpa Lahiri is that she often uses the same elements in her stories - 1)Indians from India 2)Indians from India living in the Boston/Cambridge area 3)An arranged marriage[I think that she favors them over love oriented marriages - they seem to work out better in her stories] 4)An Indian man whose an engineer 5)A prestigious university - Harvard,M.I.T.,etc. 5)A dead parent - and even with this limitation, she is able to create totally unique stories. The stories may have common borders, but they aren't the same story. Either she is using limited elements to challenge herself or she's trying to create her own territory - the way that Anne Tyler and Ann Beattie and John Cheever and Thomas Hardy have.Book Review: genius
Summary: 5 Stars
In my opinion, Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the greatest writers of our time. I am not surprised that one of the stores within won the Pulitzer. Her writing is amazing. Treat yourself to this collection!Book Review: A masterpiece!
Summary: 5 Stars
The author has a truly amazing way with words. She is a gifted writer who will not only have you delve into her stories and vibrant characters, but if you are a bibliophile and a lover of words, you will love the mesmerizing use of her words as they come alive in beautifully constructed sentences. Reading this book is like admiring a Van Gogh.
Words on a page are like paint on a canvas, and Jhumpa Lahiri succeeds in choosing colorful words in the right combination, ratio, and lighting (so to speak) to produce a moving canvas that just gets better the more the viewer (a.k.a. the reader) admires it (reads it). After all, the author won a Pulitzer Prize for her work.
This book is a collection of stories about love. The title, `Interpreter of Maladies', stands for an interpreter working at a doctor's office, with the job of translating the patients' symptoms to the doctor. India has many dialects, and Indian people do not necessary all understand each other. A translator is therefore necessary.
A woman married to a man she no longer loves, and in the process, lost the love of living, ends up having an affair with her husband's friend. She becomes pregnant with his friend's child, but neither her husband nor the real father knows that. However, she confides to the `interpreter of maladies', hoping he would find a remedy to her bizarre situation. Unbeknown to her, the interpreter of maladies has fallen in love with her.
Lahiri describes the steps of falling in love and out of love in such detail you would think you are there with the characters. For example, I liked how the interpreter of maladies mentally calculates when he would be receiving a letter from the woman he has fallen in love with. He calculates the days she has remaining in India, then adds her travel days, gives a few days for her to finally write a letter and mail it, and for the two weeks it would take the letter to reach India from the United States. In all, he reckons it would take about 6 weeks. Six weeks of painfully waiting for a letter from a woman he loves! Remember those days we all anxiously awaited letters from our significant halves? Did you run to your mailbox every time the mailman drove by your driveway? With the advent of emails, those days are now relics of the past, but how beautiful it is to remember those days.
Read this book: you will laugh and weep; and just maybe, you'll remember some old forgotten love affair!
Book Review: Deserving of the Pulitzer
Summary: 5 Stars
Interpreter of Maladies was a surprising treat, and absolutely worthy of the Pulitzer. These richly woven tales deliver insight to Indian culture and universal humanity. I don't typically read short story collections, as I prefer to devote myself to characters for a longer duration. However, I connected with each of the characters and felt moved by their situations during the brief and touching stories. Bravo!