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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780307265739 |
Powells.com Staff Pick
Unaccustomed Earth is in many ways a deeply and authentically sad book. I would not advise reading the stories too quickly; they will each haunt you for days afterward (and, unusually in a collection like this, they are all equally strong). But Lahiri's prose is worth it; her work is masterful, confident, and timeless, and this gorgeously written collection of stories is her strongest fiction yet.
Recommended by Jill, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself. In A Choice of Accommodations, a husband's attempt to turn an old friend's wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In Only Goodness, a sister 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 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 Jhumpa Lahiri's signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
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About the Author
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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beccasbookstack, April 27, 2008 (view all comments by beccasbookstack)
Every story in this collection is a masterpiece. As much as I loved The Namesake, Lahiri’s novel, she is an absolute master of the short story, and I can see why she returned to the genre for her second book. She may well be this generation’s Alice Munroe, the writer who makes a name for herself with an entire oeuvre of short stories. With this collection (as with Interpreter of Maladies) I never for a second felt the sense of incompleteness short stories sometimes lend. Her characters are so complex, her prose so dense and delectable, the reader feels as if they are immersed in a full length novel.
But by far the most riveting of all are the three linked stories that make up Part II of the book. In Hema and Kaushik, we follow the fates of two people who first meet as children when their parents share a house one winter. Their lives separate and intersect in unusual and occasionally painful ways, until destiny brings them together one last time. Hema and Kaushik is a brilliant elegy to life and to love, to family relationships and the power of fate, and the ways they interact. It could easily stand alone as a poignant and perfect novella.
As in Interpreter of Maladies, all Lahiri’s characters have the common thread of nationality to bind them. But their ethnicity is not necessarily the “unaccustomed earth” to which the title refers. Most of them are traversing new emotional territory, much of it regarding loss - of a parent, a partner, an ideal. Relationships are explored in painstaking detail, as in “Only Goodness,” where an older sister tries her best to provide her younger brother with “the perfect childhood,” and is so bitterly disappointed when his alcoholism prevents them from having the adult relationship she desires.
Lahiri chose a quotation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s as the epigraph for this collection: “Human nature will not flourish…if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children…shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” This proves to be the perfect metaphor for each of Lahiri’s characters, in a volume of elegant, emotionally exquisite
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Laurie Blum, April 17, 2008 (view all comments by Laurie Blum)
I decided to visit India after I read the book & saw the film "The Namesake." During my journey, I read Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" and now, another fresh collection of eight beautiful stories entitled "Unaccustomed Earth" which addresses the issues of old fashioned Bengali customs, traditional Indian arrangements, loss, love & family life. It's a do not miss, already #1 on the NY Times best seller list.
The opening story (which is my most memorable) assumes its title from a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote ...
"roots into unaccustomed earth" rather than replanting succeeding generations "in the same worn-out soil."
BRAVA !!
View all 2 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780307265739
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Author:
- Subject:
- United states
- Subject:
- Bengali (South Asian people)
- Subject:
- Short Stories (single author)
- Publication Date:
- April 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 333
- Dimensions:
- 8.60x6.00x1.23 in. 1.24 lbs.
