Unaccustomed Earth

I have been a fan of Jhumpa Lahiri since first reading her Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). She is perhaps best known for her work The Namesake (2003), which was recently made into a movie. Lahiri is a master of the short story format. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri again examines the complex relationship between Bengali ex-pats and their American born children. What makes all of these stories even more appealing, is Lahiri's ability to delve deeply into family themes that are universal to all cultures. If I were to have one criticism of this book, and I felt the same way about The Namesake, it is that each story comes to a rather abrupt end. You are left feeling like you need to know more, but perhaps this is also what makes her work so compelling, and open to individual interpretation.

Below you will find a summary and published review. Let me know what you think of Unaccustomed Earth, and check back next month for our next book!

Library Journal (February 1, 2008)

Four years after the release of her best-selling novel, The Namesake, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri returns with her highly anticipated second collection of short stories exploring the inevitable tension brought on by family life. The title story, for example, takes on a young mother nervously hosting her widowed father, who is visiting between trips he takes with a lover he has kept secret from his family. What could have easily been a melodramatic soap opera is instead a meticulously crafted piece that accurately depicts the intricacies of the father-daughter relationship. In a departure from her first book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri divides this book into two parts, devoting the second half of the book to "Hema and Kaushik," three stories that together tell the story of a young man and woman who meet as children and, by chance, reunite years later halfway around the world. The author's ability to flesh out completely even minor characters in every story, and especially in this trio of stories, is what will keep readers invested in the work until its heartbreaking conclusion.