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Unaccustomed Earth

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Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$25.00~~
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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

87 reviews
Sales Rank: 91

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 6-10 of 87

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Lahiri shows her growth as a writer July 17, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

Lahiri's stories are described as a slow burn. This is most evident in this collection. Each story seemingly plods on, but at the end of each one, the reader sees it all come together. I absolutely loved the final story, which was more like a novella. It perfectly described the joys and pitfalls of illicit romance. I felt as if this collection took on cultural identity in a more subtle way than Lahiri's two other books. The characters are all Bengali, but they are somehow also more American than the characters in 'Interpreter of Maladies' and 'The Namesake'. I don't know if this is a function of Lahiri growing as a writer or if it was done intentionally. Either way, she's done a bang up job.

5 out of 5 stars

I was sad to leave the characters July 17, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

Unaccustomed Earth is a wonderful collection of stories that you are so sad to leave at the end of each one. A book that doesn't leave you. I am so happy that I found it.

5 out of 5 stars

An Unaccustomed Joy July 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

When Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning volume of short stories, "The Interpreter of Maladies" was published, I didn't read it. For one thing, I'd just read Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" and Rohinton Mistry's "Family Matters," and while I absolutely loved both books, I was suffering from a surfeit of Indian fiction, at least at that time. But more than that, I gave "The Interpreter of Maladies" a pass because of all the hype. I've been let down by hype in the past. More than once. Surely the book couldn't be that good, I told myself. Surely Lahiri's prose wasn't that sparkling and fresh.

When "Unaccustomed Earth," Lahiri's third book of longer short stories was released, I'd "sort of" decided to give it a pass as well. I have plenty to read and didn't really need anything new. However, I was shopping the other day and there was the book, lying on a table right in front of me. I couldn't resist. But please keep in mind, I approached the book with a mind to dislike it.

Suffice to say, I was astounded at the beauty and grace in Lahiri's stories. No, the plots aren't much to speak of. Nothing earth shattering really happens. These are just normal people leading normal lives. Yes, they're Bengali-Americans, but so what? What's really important is that they could be Irish or Russian or German or English. Lahiri writes about the universality of the human experience, not about experiences that are unique to Bengalis or Bengali-Americans. I've never been to India, and I know few people of Indian descent, but I related totally to the characters in "Unaccustomed Earth." I felt their pain, their loneliness, their striving for happiness. Lahiri, I learned, writes about the human heart, and the human heart, I think, is the same the world over. It doesn't matter if one's Bengali, South African, Dutch, or Chinese.

Lahiri's prose is spare and unadorned, but I was so impressed by its tremendous emotional depth and understanding, as well as Lahiri's unwavering eye for detail. All her characters came to life for me, even the minor ones.

Personally, I can't understand criticism of Lahiri because she writes about Bengali-Americans. Doesn't Alice Munro write about Canadians? Doesn't William Trevor write about the Irish? Did Chekhov write about Russians and Eudora Welty about people of the American South? No, I wouldn't be able to read Lahiri every day. But neither would I be able to read Alice Munro or Chekhov every day. That takes nothing away from their writing or their mastery.

Though I liked some of the stories better than others, I think this was just a matter of personal preference. I didn't find the stories uneven. I didn't think one was weaker than the others or one significantly stronger, another testament to Lahiri's power as a writer.

If I have any criticism of Lahiri at all, it's that she doesn't include more humor in her stories. Oh, I don't mean she should write comic stories. Far from it. But life, someone reminded me the other day, is both comic and tragic, and to exclude one in favor of the other is to diminish truth. I'd like to see a little, not a lot, just a little, understated humor in Lahiri's stories.

If you're new to Lahiri's writing, "Unaccustomed Earth" isn't a bad place to start. These are rich, deeply emotional stories, the stories of an emotionally mature writer, but they're also very, very restrained and understated. As for me, I'll be moving on to Lahiri's first novel, "The Namesake," and this time, I won't approach it with anything but admiration and respect.

5 out of 5 stars

Well Worth Reading July 12, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful

Another great work by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's nice to find a consistent writer that is never a disappointment.

3 out of 5 stars

Unaccustomed praise? July 8, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

...not by today's standards! I have read this author's earlier work and actually enjoyed some of the stories in her collection from a few years back. But deserving of a Pulitzer? In all fairness, I must say that it seems as though one must now be ethnic and from a Third World country to get any literary recognition in this fair United States these days. I'd say this might be a good thing if these writers were really coming from difficulty and struggle. But that is not the case with these ethnic immigrant writers of today. If one is as privileged as Ms. Lahiri has been, (and there are many), you will go to the correct top tier Ivy League schools, which will give you correct entry to the publishing circle elite. Let me just say that I welcome varied experience; I am all for different perspectives-but what's missing here is the grit of life. We can't help but see that Lahiri's dramas are rather predictable, shallow and simply not constituting the very stuff of which great fiction is made.

To wit: the greatest writers, to me, never entered an MFA program or Ivy League type of school. I think this is true today as any. Could you imagine Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Dickenson, Gogol, Austen, Whitman, George Eliot et al, coming out of the precious Iowa School or any other assortment of MFA programs? I think not. What constitutes such a lustrous and exquisite rendering of life is life itself. And those great writers lived it. Sad to say this no longer seems to be the case. And our expectations are so lowered as a result of it.

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