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Powell's Q&A, Q&A | October 16, 2009

Gail Collins: IMG Powell's Q&A: Gail Collins



[My new book] starts in 1960 with a woman named Lois Rabinowitz, who was evicted from Manhattan traffic court for attempting to pay a parking ticket while wearing slacks. This was... Continue »

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2 Beaverton Literature- A to Z

Other titles in the Vintage Contemporaries series:

  1. A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories
  2. A Brief History of the Flood
  3. A Closed Eye
  4. A Cure for Dreams
  5. A Far Country
  6. A Handbook to Luck
  7. A Lesson Before Dying
  8. A Movie...and a Book
  9. A Piece of My Heart
  10. A Special Providence
  11. A Stranger in This World: Stories
  12. A Thing (or Two) about Curtis and Camilla
  13. Abandon
  14. All I Could Get
  15. American Psycho
  16. Anagrams
  17. Angel Rock
  18. Another Green World
  19. Asa, as I Knew Him
  20. Ash Wednesday
  21. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse
  22. Babylon and Other Stories
  23. Babylon Rolling
  24. Back in the World: Stories
  25. Bad Behavior
  26. Bailey's Cafe
  27. Bicycle Days
  28. Big Bad Love: Stories
  29. Black Tickets ((Rev)79 Edition)
  30. Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had to
  31. Breaking and entering
  32. Bridge of Sighs
  33. Brief Lives
  34. Bright Lights, Big City
  35. Brightness Falls
  36. Brother, I'm Dying
  37. Buffalo Soldiers
  38. Burning House
  39. Casa En Mango Street (House on Mango Street)
  40. Cathedral
  41. Catherine Carmier
  42. Chasing Windmills
  43. Checkpoint
  44. Chilly Scenes of Winter
  45. Claire Marvel
  46. Company
  47. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories
  48. Day
  49. Day of the Bees
  50. December
  51. Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera
  52. Delcorso's Gallery
  53. Dirty Work
  54. Distortions
  55. Dogwalker: Stories
  56. Dr. Haggard's Disease
  57. East of the Mountains
  58. East of the Mountains
  59. Edgewater Angels
  60. Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright: A Novel
  61. Empire Falls (HBO Tie-In)
  62. Enchanted Night
  63. Et Tu, Babe
  64. Evening
  65. Falling in Place (80 Edition)
  66. Father's Day
  67. Fidel's Last Days
  68. Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories
  69. Fireworks
  70. Five Gates of Hell
  71. Fraud
  72. Friend of My Youth
  73. Gallatin Canyon
  74. Ghost
  75. Glamorama
  76. God's Fool
  77. Goodnight, Nebraska
  78. Gorilla, My Love
  79. Great Neck
  80. Happy All the Time
  81. Henry of Atlantic City
  82. Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
  83. Honeymoon: And Other Stories
  84. House of Sand and Fog
  85. How to Breathe Underwater: Stories
  86. In a Country of Mothers
  87. In Lucia's Eyes
  88. In My Father's House
  89. In the Cut
  90. In the Driver's Seat
  91. In the Fall
  92. In Times of Siege
  93. Indelible Acts
  94. Jack
  95. Jamesland
  96. Jernigan
  97. Keep the Change
  98. Kentucky Straight: Stories
  99. King Bongo: A Novel of Havana
  100. Krik? Krak!
  101. La Casa En Mango Street
  102. Lark and Termite
  103. Last of Menu Girls - With New Introduction ((Rev)04 Edition)
  104. Latecomers
  105. Leaving Home
  106. Lewis Percy
  107. Like Life: Stories
  108. Like You'd Understand, Anyway
  109. Little America
  110. Love Always
  111. Love Among the Ruins
  112. Love in the Present Tense
  113. Lunar Park
  114. Lust and Other Stories
  115. Lying Awake
  116. Mama Day
  117. Matrimony
  118. Meditations from a Movable Chair: Essays
  119. Meditations in Green
  120. Memoirs of a Geisha
  121. Mile Zero
  122. Monkeys
  123. Moons of Jupiter (82 Edition)
  124. Mortimer of the Maghreb: Stories
  125. Mozart and Leadbelly (05 Edition)
  126. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist
  127. Netherland
  128. New England White
  129. Ninety-Two in the Shade
  130. Nobody's Angel
  131. Nothing But Blue Skies
  132. Nothing Lost
  133. Of Love and Dust
  134. Off Keck Road: A Novella
  135. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
  136. One To Count Cadence
  137. Our Lady of the Forest
  138. Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories
  139. Palace Council
  140. Panama (78 Edition)
  141. Paradise
  142. Park City: New and Selected Stories
  143. Particles and Luck
  144. Peace
  145. Philadelphia Fire
  146. Picturing Will
  147. Plainsong
  148. Players
  149. Preston Falls
  150. Prisoners of War
  151. Project X
  152. Providence
  153. Rabbit Boss
  154. Ransom
  155. Ratner's Star
  156. Reservation Road
  157. Reservation Road
  158. Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-In Edition)
  159. Rocket City
  160. Salmonella Men on Planet Porno
  161. Sam the Cat: And Other Stories
  162. Samedi the Deafness
  163. SAP Rising
  164. Scooter
  165. Secrets and Surprises
  166. Selected Stories
  167. Self-Help
  168. Short Cuts: Selected Stories
  169. Short People
  170. Snow Falling on Cedars
  171. So I Am Glad
  172. Songs without Words
  173. Spider
  174. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories
  175. State of Grace
  176. Still Life with Husband
  177. Story of My Life
  178. Taking Care: Short Stories
  179. The Abomination
  180. The Abortionist's Daughter
  181. The Amalgamation Polka
  182. The Assassin's Song
  183. The Back Nine
  184. The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose
  185. The Big Girls
  186. The Bird Is a Raven
  187. The Brief History of the Dead
  188. The Cadence of Grass
  189. The Cage Keeper: And Other Stories
  190. The Chosen Place, the Timeless People
  191. The Clearing
  192. The Clearing
  193. The Closed Circle
  194. The Commitments
  195. The Commoner
  196. The Communist's Daughter
  197. The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind: Stories
  198. The Dead Fish Museum: Stories
  199. The Dive from Clausen's Pier
  200. The Double Bind
  201. The Emperor of Ocean Park: A Novel
  202. The Emperor's Children
  203. The End of California
  204. The Fan Man
  205. The Favorite Game
  206. The Feast of Love
  207. The Feast of Love (Mti)
  208. The Gone-Away World
  209. The Good Life
  210. The Great Divorce
  211. The Grotesque
  212. The Half-Life of Happiness
  213. The House of Sleep
  214. The House on Mango Street
  215. The Hundred Brothers
  216. The Joy Luck Club
  217. The King in the Tree
  218. The King Is Dead
  219. The Last Good Kiss
  220. The Laughing Sutra
  221. The Lay of the Land
  222. The Legal Limit
  223. The Lost City
  224. The Lost Father
  225. The Mezzanine
  226. The Names
  227. The Other
  228. The Outside World
  229. The Practical Heart
  230. The Progress of Love
  231. The Queen's Gambit
  232. The Rain Before It Falls
  233. The Redneck Way of Knowledge
  234. The Revolution of Little Girls
  235. The Rotters' Club
  236. The Sabotage Cafe
  237. The Salt Eaters
  238. The Senator's Wife
  239. The Soul Thief
  240. The Sporting Club
  241. The Tattoo Artist
  242. The Theory of Light and Matter
  243. The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story
  244. The Ultimate Good Luck
  245. The Uses of Enchantment
  246. The Varieties of Romantic Experience
  247. The View from the Seventh Layer
  248. The Voyage
  249. The Way Through Doors
  250. The Whore's Child: And Other Stories
  251. The Willow Field
  252. The Winemaker's Daughter
  253. The Wrong Case
  254. Things That Fall from the Sky
  255. Through the Ivory Gate
  256. Tietam Brown
  257. To My Dearest Friends
  258. To Skin a Cat
  259. Traffic and Laughter: Ted Mooney
  260. Trans-Sister Radio
  261. Trauma
  262. Trespass (Vintage)
  263. Trouble: Stories
  264. Typical American
  265. Undiscovered Gyrl
  266. Veronica
  267. Visible Spirits
  268. Wetware
  269. What Was Mine: & Other Stories
  270. When the World Was Steady
  271. Where I'm Calling from: New and Selected Stories
  272. Whores on the Hill
  273. Wildlife
  274. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Stories
  275. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories: And Other Stories
  276. You Don't Love Me Yet
  277. Young Hearts Crying
  278. Zoology
  279. Zoot-Suit Murders

Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries) Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Knopf Canada is proud to welcome this bestselling, Pulitzer Prize--winning author with eight dazzling stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life.

In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father who carefully tends her garden-where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. In A Choice of Accommodations, a couple's romantic getaway weekend takes a dark turn at a party that lasts deep into the night. In Only Goodness, a woman eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in Hema and Kaushik, a trio of linked stories-a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love and fate-we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one fateful winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with the author's signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is the work of a writer at the peak of her powers.

Synopsis:

In this collection from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, eight dazzling stories take readers from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as each explores the secrets at the heart of family life.

Synopsis:

These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers, Unaccustomed Earth exquisitely renders the most intricate workings of the heart and mind.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
mandylea6, October 17, 2009 (view all comments by mandylea6)
Truly beautiful and devastating. Jhumpa Lahiri's writing effects my heart like few authors are able to.
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Chris Horne, April 20, 2009 (view all comments by Chris Horne)
Finishing this collection of carefully wrought and longish short stories was bittersweet. Lahari is a master of character study, and it's difficult to believe she's still a young woman. Her descriptions of her multigenerational, mostly Bengali immigrant, characters felt intimate and usually sympathetic. The details may be Indian, but the emotions are universal. I can't think of any writer today who can so closely render the complicated interactions of adults and their offspring.

Two things are remarkable about these stories. One is the way she moves around from one point of view to another quite easily so that we see a situation from the standpoints of several characters. Lahiri switches smoothly in and out of various perspectives until she has rendered a little gem of a tale.

The second remarkable characteristic is the way she ends a story. It's not the classic O Henry ending where there's a twist that catches you by surprise and may not make sense entirely but what I think of now as a Lahiri ending, a devastating insight that takes your breath away. There's not an unsatisfying conclusion in any of the eight stories that make up this collection.
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(6 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307278258
Author:
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Author:
Lahiri, Jhumpa
Subject:
Short Stories (single author)
Subject:
Short stories
Subject:
Bengali Americans
Edition Description:
Paperback
Series:
Vintage Contemporaries
Publication Date:
April 2009
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
352
Dimensions:
7.92x5.30x.78 in. .56 lbs.

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