Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Release date: 2008 / 352 pages
Synopsis (from jacket cover): From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.
Review: This is my first attempt at following John Updike’s rules for reviewing – feel free to let me know if I succeed!
I had very high hopes for Lahiri’s second collection — Interpreter of Maladies helped me fall back in love with short stories — and her sophomore effort (or junior, I guess, since we should include The Namesake, her novel) did not disappoint in the least.
Earth was the first work I bought for my Kindle and the new format did not obstruct my enjoyment of her prose in the least. The first half of the collection was a series of unrelated stories — connected by Lahiri’s usual subject matter of second-generation Indian-Americans navigating the complexities of identity, familial loyalty and relationships.
The second half of the collection included stories with shared characters. I enjoyed this since Lahiri is so adept at creating characters I love, and I was thrilled to get more than one story focused on them — especially since each story was told from a different character’s perspective. However, I actually didn’t enjoy these characters quite as much as the ones in the unrelated stories — although I’m not sure why.
Unaccustomed Earth begins with an epigraph from Hawthorne’s Custom House — that quite long, seemingly unrelated introduction to The Scarlet Letter that I imagine most students chose not to read in American Literature. However, as a first impression of Unaccustomed Earth, the epigraph worked beautifully and served as the inspiration for the title:
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.
Despite Hawthorne’s assertion, we feel the tension and pull of both lands in Lahiri’s characters — a sense of rootlessness, even though most characters have the benefit of double-rootedness, both in their new homes in America and in their ancestral homes of India.
Lahiri has a knack of saturating every day objects with great symbolic meaning, and then allowing us to contemplate our awareness of this. For example, the postcards that never quite allow a sense of the sender:
Her father wrote succinct, impersonal accounts of the things he had seen or done… Occasionally there was a sentence about the weather. But there was never a sense of her father’s presence in those places.
Or the deflated balloon after a wayward sibling has disappointed yet again:
…and she saw that the balloon tied to the back of Neel’s high chair was no longer suspended on its ribbon. It had sagged to the floor, a shrunken thing incapable of bursting. She clipped the ribbon with scissors and stuffed the whole thing into the garbage, surprised at how easily it fit, thinking of the husband who no longer trusted her, of the son whose cry now interrupted her, of the fledgling family that had cracked open that morning, as typical and terrifying as any other.
What Lahiri does so well is embrace the common, universal challenges of mortality — of family — of relationships. Her focus on Indian-Americans only serves to provide a concrete anchor or context for those burdens and celebrations we all share.
Anyone else read this yet?
Hello- I thoroughly enjoyed your review and have been considering reading this book for a while and you just convinced me I should.
I teach high school English and my students are going to be reading novels of their choice after February break. I have created a wiki for them so that they can post their reviews for others to see. I will be using Updike’s rules for writing a review and with your permission would love to use your review as an example.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. -Ms Mazzola
Read it, loved it. It made my top 10 list of books read last year!
I read The Namesake by her and somehow I did not like it much!
My TSS post is up!
I loved it as well. The ending of the last story overwhelmed me. I thought it was wonderful. That said, I must admit that I’ve read all her books, and her novel The Namesake is my favorite.
I just finished Unaccustomed Earth and really enjoyed it. I haven’t read the short story genre for awhile and this book, a new favorite, will give me good reason to sample it again. Something satisfying about a short story. I especially cared for the characters in the final trilogy of interrelated stories at the end of this book. I will be reading Lahiri’s Namesake (the movie version is beautiful!) and also Interpreters of Maladies. She has managed to allow her characters to keep one foot in their home in America, but keep their Indian identities always in mind.
I have only read The Namesake and really loved it. THanks for the review.
I read Updike’s tips on reviewing as well. I’ve tried to include more quotes in my reviews to give people a taste of the author’s writing. Great review BTW and I’ll be checking this one out.
Hi Ms Mazzola! Please feel free to use any of my reviews — I’m flattered! I would love to hear how your unit goes, too — one thing I miss about the traditional classroom is doing fun new things and then witnessing how the students do. I love teaching from home online right now, but your idea made me miss the creativity of lesson planning!! Thank you!!
I really want to read this one. Thanks for the great review!
I believe it, Sarah!!
And I understand, Gautami — I do think short stories may be her forte!
I would love to hear why you, Priscilla, loved her novel the best!
Well put, Linda! I think you will be surprised when you read The Namesake — the focus is quite different from the novel’s. In fact, I watched the extra material after the movie and the filmmaker intentionally changed the focus from the son to his mother. I wonder what Lahiri thought about this?
Thank you, Samantha! I’ve really enjoyed following Updike’s guidelines so far. It’s fun to look for quotes to use as I’m reading, too…!
I loved Interpreter of Maladies and I own the Namesake (haven’t read it yet). Thanks for this review. I look forward to reading the book! Sounds good.
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I agree with your review–the stories were so beautiful! I included part of your review in my review which is here: http://litandlife.blogspot.com/2009/06/unaccustomed-earth.html
Lisa
Thank you, Lisa!!
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Looking forward to reading it soon. The review is enticing enough to read it sooner than later.
Rohit
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