Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Book Reviews of Unaccustomed Earth
Book Review: One of her best work to date
Summary: 5 Stars
Jhumpa Lahiri's first short story collection, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, won the Pulitzer Prize. Her debut novel, THE NAMESAKE, was an international bestseller and, in 2007, was made into a critically praised feature film. Where does this accomplished author go from here?
As her new short story collection, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, proves, Lahiri's fiction just gets better and better. These eight long, deftly developed stories probe the overarching themes and subjects of her career --- the adjustments made by Bengali immigrants as they attempt to adapt to American culture, the differentiation between "home" and "roots," the ways in which our visions of ourselves are composed both of heritage and new experiences.
The title of the collection comes from a quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE CUSTOMS HOUSE, which serves as the book's epigraph: "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." This idea --- of new generations taking root in new soil --- runs through all the stories here.
Lahiri's epigraph is not the only debt she owes to Hawthorne and other classic short-story writers like him. Although her concerns might be modern, Lahiri's mode of storytelling is distinctly old-fashioned, hearkening back to writers like Hawthorne himself, as well as Hardy, Chekhov and Hemingway. Her stories, unlike those of many of the (at times) self-indulgent post-modern story practitioners working today, unfold slowly, gradually, into miniature works of great beauty and profundity. There's nothing flashy here --- no gimmicks, no snarky humor --- just near-impeccable storytelling driven by memorable characters and situations.
In the title story, a woman who has recently moved to Seattle with her American husband and their young son anxiously awaits the arrival of her widowed father, making the first visit since his wife's death. Ruma fears that, in accordance with Bengali custom, her father will expect to move in with the young family. But he has a secret of his own, one that will shape not only their short visit together but also their impressions of one another.
In "Only Goodness," Sudha always looked out for her younger brother Rahul, determined to give him the kind of traditional American childhood she never had, since her parents were too busy adapting to a new country to give her the trappings of childhood indulgence. But when Rahul, now a young man, disappoints his family repeatedly and slips into self-destructive alcoholism, Sudha must decide for herself where to set limits on her allowances for her brother.
Probably the most emotionally wrenching of the stories is the story arc "Hema and Kaushik," a set of three loosely intertwined short stories that follow two children of Bengali immigrants from adolescence to adulthood. Like a good novel, these tales manage to invest readers deeply in their characters, both of whom, like many of Lahiri's characters, find it hard to interpret the true meaning of "home." Those who have shared Hema and Kaushik's decades-long journey will be deeply moved by the final story's closing paragraphs, as both characters encounter very different sorts of tragedies.
Many readers who loved THE NAMESAKE may be reluctant to pick up a collection of short stories, a genre that has gained an unfortunate reputation for inaccessibility and opaqueness. To miss out on this collection, though, would be to overlook not only the best work of Lahiri's stellar career to date but also one of the finest works of fiction published so far this year.
Book Review: Lahiri Penetrates the Challenges Between Cultures and Generations with Emotional Acuity
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who has been fortunate enough to read Jhumpa Lahiri's previous works like Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake already know the lushness of her prose and the emotional depth of her characters when they read her latest collection of short stories. She again focuses on the intractable bridge between old and new cultures and generations in her piercing look at the lives of expatriate Bengalis and their first-generation American-born children. The precarious balance the younger generation discovers they need to maintain is more than recognizing the disparities between Asian and Western cultures. It becomes an introspective struggle between maintaining traditional values and assimilating into the meritocratic American system. Primarily in their thirties and often feeling adrift in this cross-generational quagmire, they are silently ambivalent about their parents, traversing between betrayal and awe in mercurial strokes.
Each of the eight stories is meticulously crafted by Lahiri to amplify her unifying theme with a minimum of contrivance. The title story focuses on an aging widower's visit with his daughter Ruma's family in Seattle. He has felt inordinately liberated since his wife's death, and now Ruma wants him to live permanently with her family. They struggle to reach a level of intimacy they have never known before. A similar struggle can be found in "Only Goodness", in which a rehabilitated alcoholic attempts to return to his estranged family through his elder sister. Even relationships that seem established on the surface such as the cross-cultural marriage at the center of the subtle "A Choice of Accommodations" unravel in small details as they travel to the wedding of an old friend. A non-Indian perspective is also represented in "Nobody's Business" where a student named Paul gets involved in the personal affairs of his housemate Sangeeta. A surprising jewel of a tale, "Hell-Heaven" spells out a housewife's attraction toward a younger man in subtly engrossing terms.
My favorite part of the book is the three-part story under the umbrella title of "Hema and Kaushik" that ends the collection because it best summarizes Lahiri's concept of assimilation, specifically coming to terms with a constant disorientation. The first story, "Once in a Lifetime", introduces us to the two characters as teens with Kaushik having just returned from India. The middle and best story, "Year's End", flashes forward with Kaushik having become a globetrotting photojournalist who comes to realize his unaccustomed earth is his own home in Massachusetts where his father's new family has effectively eradicated any trace of late mother's life. Lahiri poignantly shows how his journey is not about fitting in or settling down but embracing one's heritage to forge one's destiny in full. The final story is a bit anticlimactic with Hema and Kaushik meeting again in Italy. Regardless, the author is fully aware of how the world's irrationalities pose a constant challenge to her characters. She knows they remain true to themselves only by keeping vigil on their culture.
Book Review: Beautifully written
Summary: 5 Stars
Following the enormously successful 'The Interpreter of Maladies' and 'The Namesake', Ms. Lahiri weaves a beautiful set of stories in this evocative collection.
In her inimitable style, we view the world in the persona of the protagonists - taciturn, often Bengali. They do much of the "talking" sans dialogue, expressing their complex and deep emotions about the world around them. It is here that Ms.Lahiri's literary magic really becomes apparent. She paints broad brush strokes of time and emotion yet is remarkably descriptive of the smallest facets, taking us into the mind of her characters. In amazing detail, she outlines the smallest bits of scenery, without ever sounding verbose or dull. While one may not have ventured to all of her locales - Calcutta, Seattle or her favorite Ivy League settings in the northeast or an autumnal Italy, her vivid descriptions enable us to be right there. For the first half of the book, we are taken for 50-60 pages at a time into the lives of Ruma, a daughter who feels a strong sense of duty towards her widowed father who visits her and bonds with his grandson, all while concealing his secret love affair, to the "crush" of a married woman for another man as seen through the eyes of her daughter. The couple Megan and Amit who attend a weekend wedding with their own marriage having a crisis moment to Sudha grappling with her guilt at her brother's alcoholism to the story of Paul who harbors unreciprocated feelings for his housemate Sang and is drawn into her life in a manner he never anticipates. The second half of the book deals with the stories of Hema and Kaushik as their lives intersect as kids, the secret and kinship they share, Kaushik's life and a chance encounter decades later that leaves so much behind and yet doesn't.
One does not have to be Bengali or even Indian to appreciate the universal appeal of the human stories she deftly weaves - infidelity, familial interactions with parents and siblings, love, loss and longing and of course her themes of straddling two cultures. It is true that she is not venturing into unexplored territory in this novel. She writes as before, of (Indian) immigrants who struggle to adjust and who build their own little bubbles. But the feelings are global as is Kaushik the photojournalist who thinks "he had so little to do with India.....and yet.....he was always regarded as an Indian first".
The subset of people who may have roots in both Calcutta and the US is probably limited. A few uniquely Bengali mentions - a grimy "flat" in Maniktala, chanachur (an Indian snack for "tea" time), Haldiram's (purveyor of the same) and words like dada and boudi (for elder brother and sister-in law often not used in a strict relational sense) merely ignite a sense of kinship with the author. Her richly textured writing make these literary easter eggs all the more savory while one knows that almost everyone is likely to find situations, feelings and characters that they can relate to.
Some of the stories do not really come to "fruition" in a conventional sense. The complexities of what may transpire next are left to our imaginations. The characters and their stories leave a sense of poignancy that lasts long after.
Book Review: superbly crafted read
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to admit that I was waiting this book for many months and I started reading it with a preconceived albeit subconscious notion that the literary journey I'm about to embark upon is one of immense finesse and depth. Some might argue that this mindset might cast a cloak on the negative qualities of the novel thereby making the stories more appealing. I've thought about this and beg to differ. Expectations of this height are hard to live by and many a (famous) novel have fallen short. Unaccustomed Earth did not.
What attracts me to her work is the fact that I can often find traces of myself and people I know in them. It's comforting to know that your trials and fears are not unique, that there can be meaning even in the mundane, mystery in the seemingly known. What started off with The Interpretor of Maladies, continued with The Namesake and found fruition in Unaccustomed Earth is a sensitive yet intense rendering of the intricate working of the heart and mind. In "Only goodness" a sister deals with guilt and concern over her kid brother's alcoholism. This was perhaps the most poignant story of the 8-story collection. Lahiri has a way of drawing the readers into the minds of her characters and making them a part of the thought process, both said and unsaid. It was like Sudha's growing concern and guilt, her embarrassment at her wedding, her longing for him when he disappears, her sheer panic at finding her baby alone in the tub and her final resolve to prioritize her child and husband's needs over her brother's as if they were all mine.
What makes Lahiri's characters so lovable is that they're not perfect. They don't always do or say the right things. Many among us have fallen hard for the wrong man like Sang does in Nobody's Business. Many among us have felt an attraction outside wedlock like in Hell-Heaven. Many among us have even been caught between the sense of responsibility towards parents vs wanting to hold on to our independence and known way on life as Ruma does in the tittle story. Fate, death, passion, confusion, a search for isolation, rebellion have been as much a part of our lives as they have of Hema and Kaushik's in the trio of stories at the end.
The prose is packed with emotional wisdom. The only not so positive quality that struck me is the sameness of the cultural backgrounds of the characters -- all highly educated Bengalis. The central theme is how these people deal with the crosscurrents of traditions and displacement of identity, how they strive to define their individuality and how they fight to cling on to the familiar. Assumptions are often negated and they are forced to deal with their new environs and new set of truths.
Yes, one might argue that "nothing happens" but how often do life altering incidents happen in our lives anyway? Isn't life woven from single treads of everyday experiences, simple joys, of innocence, attachments and fears?
Book Review: Simple. Sparse. Perfection
Summary: 5 Stars
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." This quote, which was a revelation to me, so much so that I redid my work e-mail "inspiration quote" signature to put it it, is the inspiration of Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of short stories called "Unaccustomed Earth".
This is the first book I have read of hers, and it simply does not disappoint. Eight stories are so intricately woven with their words and themes that each in itself is a beautiful work of art, and yet together, form the basis of a masterpiece. Former author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake (movie tie-in edition), Lahiri's carrying on her success with this new bunch. The book starts with the story named after the book, a story about a Bengali woman named Ruma and her father who comes to visit her from Pennsylvania. Cultures and expectations collide as these two virtual strangers learn to exist with each other without the familiar glue of her mother, who passed away only months before. A garden, her mixed race son, and a secret love, permeate the layers of this opening story that literally leave you breathless by stories end. Similar themes are woven through the other seven stories, some which I liked more than others, but all of them written with such scope and craft.
Reading a story written by Lahiri is like sitting in a well ordered, immaculate living room, with a rich, fragrant onion sitting in front of you. As you delve into the story, you peel back the layers of the onion, and the exactitude and preciseness of her stories marvel, and the scent of the onion, not bitter or harsh, but rich and alluring, fill that perfect room, so much so that by the end, all of yours senses are heightened, and you may possibly have tears in your eyes.
It's as if Lahiri wrote her stories, and took a literary comb and brushed out all of the extra verbs, nouns, and adjectives (most which can clutter today's fiction), leaving only the essential words behind, creating an exquisite picture. People have compared Lahiri's writing to Hemingway. I sense more of Michael Cunningham, who also strives for leximic precision. Both Cunningham and Lahiri's writing is character centered, creates worlds of inner conflict, and flows like a beautiful river.
After just reading the first story, I told five people of this marvelous new book, and highly recommend you to that if you want to marvel in the worlds created by Lahiri, this is the perfect place to start.