Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Unaccustomed Earth
Book Review: Compelling
Summary: 5 Stars
Jhumpa Lahiri just has a way of drawing you in. She keeps her distance from her characters. They are kept at arm's length. I absolutely love the way she leaps ahead in time within a single paragraph, vaulting over unnecessary components of the story with ease. "A Choice of Accommodations" might be my favorite here, the palpable tensions in a seasoned relationship fueling a story about a visit to a familiar but unfamiliar place. "The information fell between them, valuable for the years he'd kept it from her, negligible now that he'd told." But "Only Goodness" is compellling to watch unfold, a gripping portrait of the strains in a family and, to me, about adjusting expectations. Some terrific images and writing throughout.Book Review: Competent But Could Have Been Great
Summary: 3 Stars
When "The Interpreter of Maladies" was published in 2000 the only word one could use to describe Jhumpa Lahiri is phenom. Almost fifty years ago the young Southern writer Carson McCullers stunned the literary establishment with her debut novel "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," and here was another young unknown writer expressing the extraordinarily emotional moments of the everyday and ordinary in pristine and polished, mature and haunting prose.
"Unaccustomed Earth" is Jhumpa Lahiri's second collection of short stories. The title story is about a father, who recently lost his wife and who visits his daughter for one week. It's a story of two different people who have always misunderstood each other dealing in different ways with the grief of losing the most important person in their life. The father feels liberated, having thought that his wife was too demanding and strident. Recently retired he has also happily found a companion for his world travels. His daughter Ruma, who was very close with her mother, never allows herself to grieve, and instead opts to throw herself into motherhood, trying hard to repeat her mother's life. She leaves a legal career to focus on raising her son, is pregnant with a second child, and -- just like her mother -- is silently angry at a successful but absent husband.
Ruma takes one step further in becoming her mother by asking her father to stay with her. The father, now much wiser and freer, refuses, and wants to tell Ruma about his new companion but can't quite bring himself to doing it. In the end he subconsciously leaves a postcard to his companion where it can be easily found, and upon finding it Ruma is at first hurt and angry but finally mails it herself, thereby finally freeing her father.
This first story is by far the best story in this collection, and the rest in Lahiri's book disappoint with their triviality and inconsequence -- the biggest disappointment is a three-part saccharine story of two star-struck lovers which is just lame and silly.
There are two stories though that if developed to their full potential could have been great. There is a story of an Indian boy who goes to an elite American boarding school, and falls in love with the headmaster's daughter Pam, the symbol and embodiment of what he could never obtain. Two decades later he finds closure by attending Pam's wedding at the boarding school, where he makes passionate love with his wife in the same dorm room where he spent his teenage years haunted by his social ostracization.
And then there's another story of a sister and her alcoholic brother, and the hint that the gifted and handsome younger brother fell into alcoholism because of his devout love for his sister. It was she who snuck beer cans into his room, and when she went to college and they could no longer be together he might have turned to alcohol just to be with her again.
In both stories the promise that there's something deep and disturbing lurking under the surface is subtle. But it's way too subtle.
Jhumpa Lahiri is an extremely gifted writer, far more talented than any of her peers but it just doesn't seem as though she's trying hard enough. Lahiri needs to wrestle with her characters more, break away from them, and probe deeper into their dark psychologies. Her talent and her wisdom rival those of Raymond Carver -- the master of the short story -- and she needs to study more the brevity and depth of his prose. Lahiri's stories can be powerfully affecting at her best but Carver at his best is just absolutely devastating -- the beautiful poignancy of his prose reveals that he is haunted and plagued by his perceptions and understanding of the human condition in a way that no one can fully appreciate.
Alas, Lahiri's prose is beautiful and compelling enough for her to be able to get away with predictable plotlines and underdeveloped characters. Carson McCullers would never achieve the same success she had with her debut, and after reading "Unaccustomed Earth" one must wonder if Lahiri would share McCullers' fate.
Book Review: Continued Excellent Writing
Summary: 5 Stars
Lahiri continues to delight with her latest offering. This was as excellent as her other stories. Her writing is careful and sparse, complimenting the subtlety of her subject matter. Her displaced ethnic subject, underpinning most of her work, adds a sense of the exotic. We don't really understand, nor can we possibly understand, because eastern blood doesn't run in our veins. The people of color in her stories are "in" our world, but not "of" our world. They don't really understand it all, so how can we? I love her work. My only wish is for her to write faster, so there is more of it to read.Book Review: Continuing Gulf Between Two Cultures
Summary: 5 Stars
In this brilliant book, Lahiri sustains her control of characters and weaves tight stories. Her plots and characters move effortlessly through each vignette. Once again we meet the structured Bengali culture and their American children who never seem to completely belong in either world.
The stories emphasize intermarriage between a Bengali and an American but their coming together seems natural and no definitive blame is placed on troubled intermarriages. I had originally thought the stories wold be linked but only two were related directly.
Arranged marriages often make life easier . We learn about the strict, almost inflexible, Bengali families who come to America and desperately retain their sharp divide of women's place and the man's responsibility in a marriage. Not so when a Bengali girl or boy marries an American. Many of the alliances seemed anguished and incomplete. I didn't feel any of the characters could find contentment.
What held every story together, whether it was a drunken husband or a grieving wife missing her Bengali mother, was the demanding emphasis on education. The Bengali expected their American son or daughter to become dstinctively educated at the very best Ivy schools to attain optimum success in their fields. This theme seem the overriding reason for coming to America. The Bengali wives remained tied to their Indian cultures and continued their obsequious responses to their husbands. They remained isolated and out of touch. Not their children who desperately tried to find a place for themselves in our rich country and liberal culture.
This was a wonderful book; she is one of the best authors. We are thrown into the plots from the very first sentences. She reminds me of Anne Tyler, taking simple people who live mundane lives, but who are quite complicated and intense.
Book Review: Dazzling Stories
Summary: 5 Stars
These are careful, closely observed stories that the author illuminates with telling details: the way a daughter reminds a widower of his dead wife, or the silences that tense the tenuous link between parent and child. These stories focus on relationships, how they start, and how they end, but mostly about the moments and gestures that mark their stages. These stories read easily. Still, I went back and read them again, for the details that Lahiri sprinkles, like jewels hidden in a corner bookcase.
The short story is a more perfect form than the novel. Every word, every sentence is important. Novels sell better, but the short story satisfies in a way that the novel cannot. I marveled at Lahiri's artistry, how she employs language in a unique way. She does not dazzle with incandescent prose, but her honest humanity shines forth in her writing. I had never heard of her before I started this book, but her stories moved me in a deeply personal way. I encountered emotions that I have felt myself, but never articulated. This is the mark of good literature.