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“Last night, I attended a book club meeting at the Monkey See bookstore in downtown Northfield, Mn. Jerry, the bookstore owner, hosted Phil and Barb, Mary, Charlene, and author Tom Swift whose own book, Chief Bender’s Burden, has been getting lots of favorable publicity lately. At the once-a-month get together, we discussed the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri.
When the book debuted in April, 2008, it opened as number one on the NY Times bestseller list, another stunning achievement for Lahiri whose debut work, Interpreter of Maladies, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Lahiri, a second generation Bengali-American, sets her short stories in the context of the immigrant struggle to find comfortable ground between cultures old and new, and especially between the generations.
"T]hey did not have parents who were clinging to another way of life and exhorting their children to do the same."
"I began keeping secrets from her, evading her with the aid of my friends. I told her I was sleeping over at a friend’s when really I went to parties, drinking beer and allowing boys to kiss me and fondle my breasts . . ."
But, when the first onion skin layer of the immigrant experience is peeled away, Lahiri’s writing speaks to universal themes of the bitter and sweet in human relationships, from frayed marriages to a late life rapprochement between father and daughter or from the self destructive addictions to alcohol or a philandering mate to a grandchild’s adoration of a grandfather.
Lahiri is a master of understated prose, a simple style without flourishes, but which has the knack of revealing character in a single turn of a phrase.
“Gas is expensive here,” he added. He said this matter-of-factly, but still she felt the prick of criticism as she had all her life, feeling at fault that gas cost more in Seattle than in Pennsylvania.
Or the married couple, renting a hotel room in the mountains for a romantic weekend, upon discovering that the room was less than expected yet deciding not to ask for another because “It’s not worth it, for just two nights.” In the wife’s simple statement, the reader catches a full view of the stagnating relationship.
The author uses point of view differently, and effectively, from one story to the next. In one story, the third party close omniscient shifts back and forth, scene to scene, between father and daughter. In the next, the first person account of the child witness to the relationship of the parents is muted until the end when the child becomes an adult and moves to the story’s forefront.
The author’s well-developed craft is also on display in her compelling opening lines of each story: “Pranab Chakraborty wasn’t technically my father’s younger brother,” alerts the reader to a complicated relationship. “From the outside the hotel looked promising … but as soon as they entered the lobby of the Chadwick Inn, Amit was disappointed,” portends a story of expectations unmet. “It was Sudha who’d introduced Rahul to alcohol,” forewarns the reader of fractured sibling ties arising from addiction. And so on.
Lahiri has achieved the enviable status of a master of her craft who also has a popular following. She has both critical and public acclaim, and both are well-deserved.
This review was originally published in my blog: http://theliberalspirit.com”
Obie wrote this review Wednesday, July 15, 2009.
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