Were We Right or Were We Right: Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth
-- Publishers Weekly, 4/4/2008 10:23:00 AM
Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, returns with Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight new short fictions, the last three of which are linked. All the reviews so far are positive, most overwhelmingly so. And most cite Lahiri’s stylistic powers, and, relatedly, the book’s thematic coherence: it tackles the varied losses of Bengali families as they establish themselves in the U.S. over generations, with repeated use of the figure of the lost mother.
A plot-heavy review in the New York Times ends with a take on the book’s denouement, which reviewer Michiko Kakutani says “possesses the elegiac and haunting power of tragedy — a testament to [Lahiri’s] emotional wisdom and consummate artistry as a writer.”
Writing in the L.A. Times, Lisa Fugard finds within the collection “a howl from the heart of a writer working at the height of her powers.”
Entertainment Weekly gives the book at B+, with Jennifer Reece asking “[w]ould Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction still work if the Rahuls and Chitras were Roberts and Charlottes? If the mango-lime pickle on the refrigerator shelf were Best Foods mayonnaise?”
Ann Hulbert’s review in Slate cites the last three stories in the book, which are linked, as “a tour de force, embodying in its structure and voices Lahiri's core themes."
Paste magazine's review comes high up among search returns; John Holman’s review also finds the last three pieces “a nearly perfect example of the linked story form” and says that Lahiri, “[l]ike Jane Austen,” is “brilliant at describing ambivalent emotions, unleavened by humor.”
Here is PW’s Starred Review:
The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children-and that separates the children from India-remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen's reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals.
