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Unaccustomed Earth

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Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$25.00~~
Buy New: $14.00
You Save: $11.00 (44%)

New (58) Used (27) Collectible (16) from $12.49

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

117 reviews
Sales Rank: 364

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.3

ISBN: 0307265730
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307265739
ASIN: 0307265730

Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 86-90 of 117

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Fantastic! May 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Another fantastic book from Jhumpa Lahiri. Just a joy to read and so sad when it's finished!

5 out of 5 stars

Well Written May 2, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

A beautiful book, well written. I enjoyed it immensely. Not enough time or words for a more eloquent review.

5 out of 5 stars

Simply hypnotic...She will drag you into the rain... April 30, 2008
9 out of 12 found this review helpful

The Unaccustomed Earth is impossible to stop reading because:

1. Ms. Lahiri's short stories NEVER feel like short stories. They never feel fleeting or unsubstantial. They simply abduct you the way a 500 page novel can. Each tale is deceptively powerful...like shots of Tequila, and it only takes a few pages before you're reeling and forgetting your surroundings because you're suddenly transported to a garden in Seattle or at a wedding reception in the pouring rain.

2. And she will drag you into that rain...

3. And her characters are not the characters floating in the mind of a writer. They're not generic or vaporous or sewn together with the usual stale adjectives. You can't see the seams on these characters. You can't see where they begin or end because they don't begin and they don't end. When you meet them they're as alive as anyone you know and when you leave them at the end of a story, they go on without you, into rooms, into cars, into planes. They inhabit the world.

4. And there are families and they are all tangled up, destroyed, yearning, redeeming, hating, aching, and not once, not for a single second did I pause when I was reading The Unaccusomed Earth and think, I don't really believe this or I knew that would happen...

5. Ms. Lahiri's imagination is ferocious, stealthy, as endless as the ocean. You float into it because it's so smooth and effortless and then suddenly, deliberately, it's engulfed you.

5 out of 5 stars

Deep not wide April 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

The view of some that Lahiri's latest book is a retread inspires me to respond and defend this extraordinary writer. While it is true that she revisits characters with many similarities in profile (American-born of Bengali heritage, well-educated, often in the Boston area), it is my view that this strengthens her tales. By focusing on a specific and in some ways narrowly defined population, she is able to dig far deeper into the shared human experience underlying their outer trappings. So what if a character went to an Ivy League school? If her sibling is alcoholic, if she bought and hid for him beer when he was a teen, her guilt can be universally understood. The depth of her empathy and knowingness about human nature and the dynamics of relationships always leaves me breathless. At the end of this book I had tears in my eyes, feeling that I'd grown up with Hema and Kaushik, knew them that well, and had now seen a real event intervene in their lives. Her writing may not be for everyone, but make no mistake, her focus is not narrow but very deep.

5 out of 5 stars

Continued Excellent Writing April 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Lahiri continues to delight with her latest offering. This was as excellent as her other stories. Her writing is careful and sparse, complimenting the subtlety of her subject matter. Her displaced ethnic subject, underpinning most of her work, adds a sense of the exotic. We don't really understand, nor can we possibly understand, because eastern blood doesn't run in our veins. The people of color in her stories are "in" our world, but not "of" our world. They don't really understand it all, so how can we? I love her work. My only wish is for her to write faster, so there is more of it to read.

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