Beginning in America, and spilling back over memories and generations to India, Unaccustomed Earth explores the heart of family life and the immigrant experience. Eight luminous stories - longer and richer than any Jhumpa Lahiri has yet written - take us from America to Europe, India and Thailand as they follow new lives forged in the wake of loss.
Unaccustomed Earth
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'Lahiri's enormous gifts as a storyteller are on full display ... gorgeous' Khaled Hosseini 'Probably the most influential writer of fiction in America' Financial Times 'Contains some of the best, most beautiful fiction written this decade - the kind that will be read 50 years from now' New Statesman 'It's difficult to think of a contemporary writer who gives her characters so much dignity ... Fiction of matchless restraint, yet also of rich, complex lives and credible characters' The Times
About the Author
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London of Bengali parents, and grew up in Rhode Island, USA. Her stories have appeared in many American journals and her first collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize 2000 for Fiction, the New Yorker Prize for Best First Book, the PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Award. Her novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003 and is now a major motion picture from the director of Monsoon Wedding. Jhumpa Lahiri lives in New York with her husband and two children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Julia Flyte
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
I am not usually a reader of short stories, but this book defied many of my prejudices. I loved it. Jhumpa Lahiri's writing is beautiful. With just a few paragraphs, she can immerse you in a story so that you end up feeling as satisfied as if you've read an entire novel. She also has a wonderful eye for detail and a way of describing everyday events or objects so you feel that you've never really thought about them in that way before.
There are eight stories in this book. The final three feature the same characters but the others stand alone. However they are all quite similar in that they feature highly educated Bengali Indians living in the US and often in mixed race relationships. There are also similar themes that repeat: learning to move on after losing a loved one or the relationships between parents and their adult children.
While I enjoyed all of the stories in this book, I was particularly moved by the first (Unaccustomed Earth) and the last (Going Ashore). They are the two in which I felt the most involved and really cared about the characters. I felt somewhat detached from the others (hence the 4 star rating). However I still enjoyed them and I recommend this book without hesitation - do not let the fact that it's short stories put you off!
There are eight stories in this book. The final three feature the same characters but the others stand alone. However they are all quite similar in that they feature highly educated Bengali Indians living in the US and often in mixed race relationships. There are also similar themes that repeat: learning to move on after losing a loved one or the relationships between parents and their adult children.
While I enjoyed all of the stories in this book, I was particularly moved by the first (Unaccustomed Earth) and the last (Going Ashore). They are the two in which I felt the most involved and really cared about the characters. I felt somewhat detached from the others (hence the 4 star rating). However I still enjoyed them and I recommend this book without hesitation - do not let the fact that it's short stories put you off!
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Jessica
Format:Hardcover
As a Third Culture Kid (TCK) myself, from India, I could completely relate to the characters, their feelings, behaviour, thoughts and relationship dynamics with others. There were traces of my father in Ruma's father; of both my parents in Sudha's parents. The most captivating sotires to me were Nobody's Business because of the simplicity and complexity of love reltaionships and Part Two - Hema and Kaushik's sotry.
H and K, unlike the characters in the other stories, are given longer to develop their love story. The reader lives through glimpses of their childhood, teen years and university life. All eventually leading to their professional lives where they come together and have a love affair. Even though one of them is living out of a suitcase and the ohter is engaged to be married.
Throughout the stories, Lahiri accurately captures the emotion and conflicts of Indian immigrants to the US and briefly to London. There is a melancholy underlying the characters and their various relationships with partners, friends, room-mates and parents as Lahiri brings out their longer to belong to someone or some place matched with their sense of detachment to people and places in different ways. In short, their book, like her first, is a must-read for every Indian immigrant and third culture kid out there.
H and K, unlike the characters in the other stories, are given longer to develop their love story. The reader lives through glimpses of their childhood, teen years and university life. All eventually leading to their professional lives where they come together and have a love affair. Even though one of them is living out of a suitcase and the ohter is engaged to be married.
Throughout the stories, Lahiri accurately captures the emotion and conflicts of Indian immigrants to the US and briefly to London. There is a melancholy underlying the characters and their various relationships with partners, friends, room-mates and parents as Lahiri brings out their longer to belong to someone or some place matched with their sense of detachment to people and places in different ways. In short, their book, like her first, is a must-read for every Indian immigrant and third culture kid out there.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the Pulitzer Prize with her book The Interpreter of Maladies, continues to have one of modern fiction's most powerful voices.
The eight stories in her present book do not disappoint at all. They are wonderfully structured and are filled with acute psychological observations, eloquent writing and detailed descriptions. The main themes are about family secrets and relations. In one of them, there is the story of a widower who has a mistress and who prefers to keep it a secret from his daughter, in another, a married woman who falls platonically in love with a friend, in another, a sister who introduces her brother to alcoholism, in another, the story of a teen who cannot accept the father's new wife, etc.
Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment, bitterness, relations and maturation are brilliant and extremely realistic. Her language is aesthetically marvelous.
Joyce Åkesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and The Invitation (amazon.com)
The eight stories in her present book do not disappoint at all. They are wonderfully structured and are filled with acute psychological observations, eloquent writing and detailed descriptions. The main themes are about family secrets and relations. In one of them, there is the story of a widower who has a mistress and who prefers to keep it a secret from his daughter, in another, a married woman who falls platonically in love with a friend, in another, a sister who introduces her brother to alcoholism, in another, the story of a teen who cannot accept the father's new wife, etc.
Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment, bitterness, relations and maturation are brilliant and extremely realistic. Her language is aesthetically marvelous.
Joyce Åkesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and The Invitation (amazon.com)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun read
Firstly I want to say that I really enjoyed reading all the short stories here. I love short stories in general and I have to say that Lahiri really knows how to tell a good story,... Read more
Published 3 months ago by L. R. Noor
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thought provoking
This is a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri who is better known for her book, made into a film, called Namesake. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Discerning Reader
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
Not as good as 'Interpreter of Maladies'. It reads like a list of things the author did. Gets monotonous after a while. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Shona
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazing book-I can't comunicate this enough
This book was brought to my attention by my English teacher. This was 2 years ago. I have not forgotten this book and recently decided to get my own personal copy. Read more
Published 8 months ago by K
5.0 out of 5 stars
Could not put it down
I asked myself several times what was it that made it so difficult to put this book down, the stories themselves were often simple tales of simple people, their interactions and... Read more
Published 9 months ago by HB
5.0 out of 5 stars
'the small mirror at the back revealing more than the room at first...
A selection of brilliantly written short stories; in just a few pages Lahiri has us understanding and empathising with the characters... Read more
Published 12 months ago by sally tarbox
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enthralling
Fantastic collection of short stories. Not my normal kind of reading topic, but having read a short story by Lahiri in another collection decided to try this. Read more
Published 24 months ago by W. Wright
4.0 out of 5 stars
Earthly Customs
Really beautiful storytelling. It's subtle - you don't notice being drawn in, but it happens quickly. Read more
Published on 4 May 2011 by Mrs. J. M. Galor
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read
What a wonderful book. It captured so beautifully the psyche of what makes one Indian, and showed the differences emerging through time across the generations and how the influence... Read more
Published on 12 Nov 2010 by moonstone
4.0 out of 5 stars
an enchanting read
as an expatriate from the Indian subcontinent to the west in search of a better life, I can identify with many issues that the book deals with through easy to read short stories. Read more
Published on 5 April 2010 by R. Roy
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