Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Book Reviews of Unaccustomed Earth
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: Unaccustomed Earth
Summary: 4 Stars
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies, and author of The Namesake, returns after five years with Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight stories that are longer than short stories but not quite novella length. It's split into two parts. The first consists of five individual stories, while the second part consists of the last three tales, each involving the same two characters, Hema and Kaushik.
The first story, "Unaccustomed Earth," involves a family who recently moved to Seattle. After the death of Ruma's mother, she is left feeling guilty over the decision of whether or not to invite her aging Baba (father), to live with them. Not sure how to handle this, she invites him to stay with her for a week. Over the course of their time together, father and daughter rekindle their relationship, while secrets are revealed about their separate lives. Baba also meets and falls in love with Ruma's son Akash, looking after him, teaching him some Bengali, and treating him like a grandfather should - giving him more respect and attention than he has ever given Ruma. At the end of the week, Baba goes back home to his secret girlfriend and life of travel, leaving Ruma unsure, and the reader wanting more. "Unaccustomed Earth" sets the tone for the book, which offers stories of lives with problems and decisions and changes that affect all the characters. But it is those of Indian descent who have to deal with how much of their original culture they hold on to in their American lives.
"A Choice of Accommodations" is an interesting story about an interracial couple who are having problems with their marriage. During a weekend attending a friend's wedding, they rediscover their love and respect for each other. The most compelling story of the collection is "Nobody's Business," involving a young Indian girl, Sangeeta, who is involved with an Egyptian man, but continuously has suitors calling her with the hope of a meeting and eventual marriage. What makes the story interesting is that it is told from the perspective of the roommate, Paul, who has a crush on Sang, and finds himself unavoidably involved in her romantic and personal life while trying to complete his doctorate. While at first the story seems to go in an obvious direction, it eventually moves off on a new tangent as things change in Sang's relationship and she ends up moving back to England, with Paul having to deal with the leftover pieces.
Lahiri continues to do what she does best, creating strong, unique characters who stay with readers after the story is over. Sadly, Lahiri fails to take risks with her writing, always portraying Indian characters who - like herself - come from an affluent, upper class upbringing, in most cases in New York or New England. Perhaps in her next work, Lahiri will branch out from her write what you know world and venture into new territory. Nevertheless, Unaccustomed Earth is a fascinating collection of stories involving Indian characters struggling with issues involved in being American, but at the same time keeping their original heritage and culture alive.
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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: Unaccustomed praise
Summary: 3 Stars
Lahiri is a skilled storyteller. Her detailed descriptions and choreography of characters across time and place demonstrate her writing talent. At the same time, her frequent failure to develop characters we grow attached to - historically often the hallmark of great storytellers and writers - makes me question where her accolades originate from. Though, it's not as if there is no potential. I read 'Interpreter' when it first came out and was impressed. However, at that time the Indian immigrant story was a new genre, and Lahiri was a strong cut above the rest. Following the wave of the recycled 'immigrant struggle' story, I bypassed her first novel, 'Namesake', altogether and from what I heard I didn't miss much. I turned to this, her newest book, after some convincing. Unaccustomed earth was good enough to make hard to put down but still left me wanting.
I was left wondering why such a strong writer does not wish to, by her third book, use her ability to evoke emotion through her characters' personal relationships to also evoke a sense of familiarity among readers whose principal interactions are with people other than ivy-league graduates, upper class whites, white collar professionals, and globe trotters? This would bother me less, since Lahiri is probably fully concious of her character choices, if the media did not cast Lahiri as the authority on the Indian-American experience. The experience is so much larger than that which Lahiri portrays (including among Bengalis), yet her non-immigrant audience almost co-opts her writing to represent what they are comfortable with. None of the political ugliness that non-immigrant America needs to contend with is unearthed in Lahiri's work.
Strong stories in the book include 'Hell-Heaven' (which also appeared in the New Yorker around 2002) and 'Only Goodness'. 'A Choice of Accomodations' and 'Nobody's Business' much less so. The best part of this book comes in part two, the 'Hema and Kaushik' trilogy. This second part reveals what Lahiri is capable of. Her writing strength is on display here, as is her ability to build bonds between characters and readers. She connects readers to not only the immigrant experience, but complex personal emotions and contemporary events and phenomena that have shaped both immigrants' and non-immigrants' lives. It also has a stronger ending than many of the other stories in the book. Her accomplishment here leaves me wondering why she sacrifices so much in some of her other stories. The media's focus on her work actually does her harm in the end. It sets up unrealistic expectations for an otherwise solid writer. If Lahiri were to write an entire novel that captured the range of ability, emotions, and relevance as the 'Hema and Kaushik' trilogy, she could then righfully claim all that she has already been afforded.