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.
Unaccustomed Earth
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Best Value
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen's reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Following her thoughtful first novel, The Namesake (2003), which has been made into a meditative film, Lahiri returns to the short story, the form that earned her the Pulitzer Prize for her debut, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). The tight arc of a story is perfect for Lahiri’s keen sense of life’s abrupt and painful changes, and her avid eye for telling details. This collection’s five powerful stories and haunting triptych of tales about the fates of two Bengali families in America map the perplexing hidden forces that pull families asunder and undermine marriages. “Unaccustomed Earth,” the title story, dramatizes the divide between immigrant parents and their American-raised children, and is the first of several scathing inquiries into the lack of deep-down understanding and trust in a marriage between a Bengali and non-Bengali. An inspired miniaturist, Lahiri creates a lexicon of loaded images. A hole burned in a dressy skirt suggests vulnerability and the need to accept imperfection. Van Eyck’s famous painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, is a template for a tale contrasting marital expectations with the reality of familial relationships. A collapsed balloon is emblematic of failure. A lost bangle is shorthand for disaster. Lahiri’s emotionally and culturally astute short stories (ideal for people with limited time for pleasure reading and a hunger for serious literature) are surprising, aesthetically marvelous, and shaped by a sure and provocative sense of inevitability. --Donna Seaman
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Jhumpa Lahiri was born 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was translated into twenty-nine languages and became a bestseller both in the United States and abroad. In addition to the Pulitzer, it received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award, and a nomination for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. The Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel. She lives in New York with her husband and son.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
245 of 277 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, "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 ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." This quote, which was a revelation to me, so much so that I redid my work e-mail "inspiration quote" signature to put it it, is the inspiration of Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of short stories called "Unaccustomed Earth".
This is the first book I have read of hers, and it simply does not disappoint. Eight stories are so intricately woven with their words and themes that each in itself is a beautiful work of art, and yet together, form the basis of a masterpiece. Former author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake (movie tie-in edition), Lahiri's carrying on her success with this new bunch. The book starts with the story named after the book, a story about a Bengali woman named Ruma and her father who comes to visit her from Pennsylvania. Cultures and expectations collide as these two virtual strangers learn to exist with each other without the familiar glue of her mother, who passed away only months before. A garden, her mixed race son, and a secret love, permeate the layers of this opening story that literally leave you breathless by stories end. Similar themes are woven through the other seven stories, some which I liked more than others, but all of them written with such scope and craft.
Reading a story written by Lahiri is like sitting in a well ordered, immaculate living room, with a rich, fragrant onion sitting in front of you. As you delve into the story, you peel back the layers of the onion, and the exactitude and preciseness of her stories marvel, and the scent of the onion, not bitter or harsh, but rich and alluring, fill that perfect room, so much so that by the end, all of yours senses are heightened, and you may possibly have tears in your eyes.
It's as if Lahiri wrote her stories, and took a literary comb and brushed out all of the extra verbs, nouns, and adjectives (most which can clutter today's fiction), leaving only the essential words behind, creating an exquisite picture. People have compared Lahiri's writing to Hemingway. I sense more of Michael Cunningham, who also strives for leximic precision. Both Cunningham and Lahiri's writing is character centered, creates worlds of inner conflict, and flows like a beautiful river.
After just reading the first story, I told five people of this marvelous new book, and highly recommend you to that if you want to marvel in the worlds created by Lahiri, this is the perfect place to start.
This is the first book I have read of hers, and it simply does not disappoint. Eight stories are so intricately woven with their words and themes that each in itself is a beautiful work of art, and yet together, form the basis of a masterpiece. Former author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake (movie tie-in edition), Lahiri's carrying on her success with this new bunch. The book starts with the story named after the book, a story about a Bengali woman named Ruma and her father who comes to visit her from Pennsylvania. Cultures and expectations collide as these two virtual strangers learn to exist with each other without the familiar glue of her mother, who passed away only months before. A garden, her mixed race son, and a secret love, permeate the layers of this opening story that literally leave you breathless by stories end. Similar themes are woven through the other seven stories, some which I liked more than others, but all of them written with such scope and craft.
Reading a story written by Lahiri is like sitting in a well ordered, immaculate living room, with a rich, fragrant onion sitting in front of you. As you delve into the story, you peel back the layers of the onion, and the exactitude and preciseness of her stories marvel, and the scent of the onion, not bitter or harsh, but rich and alluring, fill that perfect room, so much so that by the end, all of yours senses are heightened, and you may possibly have tears in your eyes.
It's as if Lahiri wrote her stories, and took a literary comb and brushed out all of the extra verbs, nouns, and adjectives (most which can clutter today's fiction), leaving only the essential words behind, creating an exquisite picture. People have compared Lahiri's writing to Hemingway. I sense more of Michael Cunningham, who also strives for leximic precision. Both Cunningham and Lahiri's writing is character centered, creates worlds of inner conflict, and flows like a beautiful river.
After just reading the first story, I told five people of this marvelous new book, and highly recommend you to that if you want to marvel in the worlds created by Lahiri, this is the perfect place to start.
83 of 94 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
With UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Jhumpa Lahiri can lay claim with good reason to being the finest short story writer in America today. This book, her second collection of short stories with the full-length novel THE NAMESAKE sandwiched between, is a masterful collection of affecting tales about family life and individual self-discovery. While Lahiri's focus is relentlessly drawn toward what might be termed the "Bengali-American experience," her stories express rich underlying elements of universality, allowing them to transcend the mere "new American immigrant" genre. She shows yet again that she is a marvelous craftswoman of the short story art form and its language (words, imagery, and symbolism).
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH is eight stories, divided into two sections. The first section contains five distinct short stories, beginning with the near-novella length title story that is certainly the collection's finest. In that piece, a daughter of Indian descent, Ruma, welcomes her unexpectedly widowered father with trepidation to her new home in Seattle. Ruma is married to a Caucasian named Adam, and they have a young son named Akash. In every respect the young family is a model of mixed marriage and, in Ruma's case, full cultural assimilation. Nevertheless, her father's visit promises to force Ruma to confront the inevitable fissures that appear between first and second generation immigrant families. Travel to new countries or settling into new lands, postcards of foreign places, the soil in gardening, and measurement of distances all serve in symbolic support to the story's title, but it is a simple misplaced and unmailed postcard that pulls everything together into a poignant ending.
Lahiri's other four stories in the first section have similar themes. In "Hell-Heaven," a young woman recalls her childhood when a fellow Bengali became a family friend and part of her (and, surprisingly, her mother's) life. In "A Choice of Accommodation," (another title laden with multiple meanings), a middle-aged, mixed marriage couple (Amit and Megan) rediscover themselves and a bit of their previously unstated history during a friend's wedding held at Amit's old boarding school. In "Only Goodness," a model Bengali daughter named Sudha, married and a new mother, tries to cope with her younger brother Rahul's alcoholic failings and her likely role in making him what he has become. Of all the characters in this book, it is Rahul who comes across most powerfully.
The second part of the book contains three intertwined stories involving two characters, one female and one male, at different stages of their lives. Hema and Kaushik are first thrown together by circumstances of the latter's parents having relocated to India and then returned to the Boston area. Hema's family agrees to put Kaushik's family up until they can find a new house of their own, turning Hema's life upside down and even tossing her from her bedroom (now occupied by the three-year-older Kaushik) and onto a cot in her parents room. Tragedy looms behind these events, but it is one which Hema's family is not aware. The first story is told from Hema's viewpoint, the second about three years later from Kaushik's, and the third about twenty years later from both viewpoints. As with her opening story "Unaccustomed Earth," Lahiri finds an ending that, while somewhat contrived, is nonetheless touching.
It is only in this final piece, "Going Ashore" (again a title with multiple meanings), that Lahiri brings her narratives into the present day. The earlier stories appear to take place mostly in about the 1980's, with references to VCR's and record players and telephones with long extension cords. They seem oddly removed from everyday reality, as if they represented a sort of wistful backward stare at a different era, to a time when America was still a shining light on a hill and India was a place to escape before the Internet age and globalization changed some of the balance in their relationship. By the time of "Going Ashore," both Hema and Kaushik are adrift in global waters, world citizens who travel freely, lack strong personal attachments, and exist without the roots of family and place and culture that those of the prior generation clearly demonstrated in the earlier stories. Even their careers are disassociative: Hema's as a researcher of the ancient Etruscan civilization, Kaushik's as a photographer of world events who stands forever outside the very events whose images he captures.
If I had one criticism of UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, it would be Lahiri's seemingly incessant focus on one group of Bengalis, the academically-striving, economically prosperous, high achievers. Story after story expresses variations on the same themes from among the same types of people. Lahiri offers repeated mixed marriages (Ruma and Adam, Pranab and Deborah, Amit and Megan, Sudha and Roger Featherstone, Rahul and Elena). Nearly everyone is a PhD - perhaps that is what makes Rahul and Kaushik seem so refreshingly real - and everyone is an academic overachiever whose alma maters would make even US News & World Report blush - Princeton, MIT, Radcliffe, Harvard Medical School, Columbia, U Penn, London School of Economics, Cornell, NYU, Bryn Mawr, Tufts, Colgate, Swarthmore. One character has actually been slumming as a physics professor at Michigan State, but thankfully he's finally on his way to the more acceptable MIT. There must be other Bengalis in America worth writing about, and there must be other stories that do not lead one to paraphrase Tolstoy with, "Every happy Bengali family is alike, and every unhappy Bengali family is also unhappy in the same way."
Here's hoping that Ms. Lahiri can apply her brilliant writing skills (...clusters of swallows like giant thumbprints swiping the sky...") to a broader canvas in future works; the results promise to be stunning. In the meantime, be pleased as a reader to sit quietly and relish a master at work in these eight compelling and emotionally satisfying short stories. They are well worth the time.
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH is eight stories, divided into two sections. The first section contains five distinct short stories, beginning with the near-novella length title story that is certainly the collection's finest. In that piece, a daughter of Indian descent, Ruma, welcomes her unexpectedly widowered father with trepidation to her new home in Seattle. Ruma is married to a Caucasian named Adam, and they have a young son named Akash. In every respect the young family is a model of mixed marriage and, in Ruma's case, full cultural assimilation. Nevertheless, her father's visit promises to force Ruma to confront the inevitable fissures that appear between first and second generation immigrant families. Travel to new countries or settling into new lands, postcards of foreign places, the soil in gardening, and measurement of distances all serve in symbolic support to the story's title, but it is a simple misplaced and unmailed postcard that pulls everything together into a poignant ending.
Lahiri's other four stories in the first section have similar themes. In "Hell-Heaven," a young woman recalls her childhood when a fellow Bengali became a family friend and part of her (and, surprisingly, her mother's) life. In "A Choice of Accommodation," (another title laden with multiple meanings), a middle-aged, mixed marriage couple (Amit and Megan) rediscover themselves and a bit of their previously unstated history during a friend's wedding held at Amit's old boarding school. In "Only Goodness," a model Bengali daughter named Sudha, married and a new mother, tries to cope with her younger brother Rahul's alcoholic failings and her likely role in making him what he has become. Of all the characters in this book, it is Rahul who comes across most powerfully.
The second part of the book contains three intertwined stories involving two characters, one female and one male, at different stages of their lives. Hema and Kaushik are first thrown together by circumstances of the latter's parents having relocated to India and then returned to the Boston area. Hema's family agrees to put Kaushik's family up until they can find a new house of their own, turning Hema's life upside down and even tossing her from her bedroom (now occupied by the three-year-older Kaushik) and onto a cot in her parents room. Tragedy looms behind these events, but it is one which Hema's family is not aware. The first story is told from Hema's viewpoint, the second about three years later from Kaushik's, and the third about twenty years later from both viewpoints. As with her opening story "Unaccustomed Earth," Lahiri finds an ending that, while somewhat contrived, is nonetheless touching.
It is only in this final piece, "Going Ashore" (again a title with multiple meanings), that Lahiri brings her narratives into the present day. The earlier stories appear to take place mostly in about the 1980's, with references to VCR's and record players and telephones with long extension cords. They seem oddly removed from everyday reality, as if they represented a sort of wistful backward stare at a different era, to a time when America was still a shining light on a hill and India was a place to escape before the Internet age and globalization changed some of the balance in their relationship. By the time of "Going Ashore," both Hema and Kaushik are adrift in global waters, world citizens who travel freely, lack strong personal attachments, and exist without the roots of family and place and culture that those of the prior generation clearly demonstrated in the earlier stories. Even their careers are disassociative: Hema's as a researcher of the ancient Etruscan civilization, Kaushik's as a photographer of world events who stands forever outside the very events whose images he captures.
If I had one criticism of UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, it would be Lahiri's seemingly incessant focus on one group of Bengalis, the academically-striving, economically prosperous, high achievers. Story after story expresses variations on the same themes from among the same types of people. Lahiri offers repeated mixed marriages (Ruma and Adam, Pranab and Deborah, Amit and Megan, Sudha and Roger Featherstone, Rahul and Elena). Nearly everyone is a PhD - perhaps that is what makes Rahul and Kaushik seem so refreshingly real - and everyone is an academic overachiever whose alma maters would make even US News & World Report blush - Princeton, MIT, Radcliffe, Harvard Medical School, Columbia, U Penn, London School of Economics, Cornell, NYU, Bryn Mawr, Tufts, Colgate, Swarthmore. One character has actually been slumming as a physics professor at Michigan State, but thankfully he's finally on his way to the more acceptable MIT. There must be other Bengalis in America worth writing about, and there must be other stories that do not lead one to paraphrase Tolstoy with, "Every happy Bengali family is alike, and every unhappy Bengali family is also unhappy in the same way."
Here's hoping that Ms. Lahiri can apply her brilliant writing skills (...clusters of swallows like giant thumbprints swiping the sky...") to a broader canvas in future works; the results promise to be stunning. In the meantime, be pleased as a reader to sit quietly and relish a master at work in these eight compelling and emotionally satisfying short stories. They are well worth the time.
201 of 237 people found the following review helpful
By Monika
Format:Hardcover
I don't want to criticize Jhumpa for always choosing the same milieu and the same class of Ivy League privileged Bengali families in the US. It's all well known and she doesn't try to deny it. But what seems most disappointing about her writing is that we have the impression she is constantly recycling the same characters, who although sometimes flawed, always seem somewhat too well planned out and not real enough. They want to live beyond the constraints of their cultural up-bringing, but they never really expand their experience beyond occasionally marrying an American. The short story that stood out the most for me was "Nobody's business" where the author finally strays from the usual plot; that of a mixed marriage, but the plot still seems to dance around marriage and education.
Ms Lahiri's writing is mostly quite pleasant, skilled and at times a brilliantly put together prose, yet it lacks luster or humor. The characters, like the story lines are always on the verge of exploding, on the verge of something meaningful happing to them, yet they always stop short and the endings inevitably seem underwhelming.
The emotions that she tries so hard to elicit in the reader feel contrived. Having read numerous comparisons to Alice Munro, I was expecting much more, but if you are looking for an enjoyable read on the plane, I'd whole heartedly recommend it.
Ms Lahiri's writing is mostly quite pleasant, skilled and at times a brilliantly put together prose, yet it lacks luster or humor. The characters, like the story lines are always on the verge of exploding, on the verge of something meaningful happing to them, yet they always stop short and the endings inevitably seem underwhelming.
The emotions that she tries so hard to elicit in the reader feel contrived. Having read numerous comparisons to Alice Munro, I was expecting much more, but if you are looking for an enjoyable read on the plane, I'd whole heartedly recommend it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very tender beautiful stories
The stories are really touching and they stay with you for a long time. I found it in my local library and then bought it on amazon for my ma-in-law and she loved it too. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Ash's mom
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rich but not embellished
Great writing style, interesting stories, interesting people who are foreign yet at the same time they are also "everyman"; Characters treated with empathy and presented so... Read more
Published 10 days ago by A. M. Fritz
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's just short stories!
I read this book for my Book Club and didn't realize that it was just a collection of short stories when I started reading. Read more
Published 17 days ago by Janis L. Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable insight into Bengali Indians' Experience in America
Recommended by my mom, a collection of short stories of various Bengali Indians and their travels between India and America. The characters are very human, compelling. Read more
Published 21 days ago by Miss D
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unaccustomed earth
This book is such an easy read. The stories are great and the whole flow of the book seems effortless. I really enjoyed reading it. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Michael Newman
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very well written
I am one of Lahiri's biggest fans. Her books never fail to evoke a sense of nostalgia (although I'm not Bengali, I am from another part of India but the cultures are similar... Read more
Published 1 month ago by annumil04
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unpredictable and moving short stories
Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. I was first introduced to her after seeing the film adaptation of her debut novel, the Namesake. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Underground Crafter
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yet another amazing collection of short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri
Wish the stories were longer... I loved reading them so much and went through the book very quickly. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Amazon Shopper
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not impressed
It was beautifully written but I couldn't appreciate the short stories. The second half could have been a novel all on its own. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Kirsten Treadwell
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lahiri is a wonderful writer
Lahiri has a senstive understanding of families, whether they are immigrant families or Indian families, or neither.
Her writing is superb.
Her writing is superb.
Published 1 month ago by painter
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
So You'd Like to...
|
|
