The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (Paperback)

by Chitra Divakaruni (Author) "WHEN THE ALARM goes off at 5:00 A.M., buzzing like a trapped wasp, Mrs. Dutta has been lying awake for quite a while..." (more)
Key Phrases: Aunt Seema, San Francisco, Los Angeles

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The female protagonists of eight of the nine stories in Divakaruni's sensuously evocative new collection are caught between the beliefs and traditions of their Indian heritage and those of their, or their children's, new homeland, America. Nowhere is this dichotomy of cultures so well evoked as in the title story, in which Divakaruni's gift for writing image-filled prose illuminates Berkeley resident Ruchira's gift for painting mythic figures from Indian legends, and poignantly underscores a very contemporary marriage dilemma, which Ruchira solves by intuiting her dead grandmother's advice. Equally excellent is "The Names of Stars in Bengali," the beautifully nuanced story of a San Francisco wife and mother who returns to her native village in India to visit her mother, in which each understands afresh the emotional dislocation caused by stepping into "a time machine called immigration" that subjects them to "the alien habits of a world they had imagined imperfectly." One misses a similar level of sophistication in such stories as "The Blooming Season for Cacti," "The Love of a Good Man" and "The Lives of Strangers," all of which seem contrived, overwrought and predictable. Yet at her best, as in "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" and "The Intelligence of Wild Things,'' Divakaruni writes intensely touching tales of lapsed communication, inarticulate love and redemptive memories. This is a mixed collection, then, but one worth reading for the predominance of narratives that ring true as they illuminate the difficult adjustments of women in whom memory and duty must coexist with a new, often painful and disorienting set of standards. Starting with her first novel, The Mistress of Spices, India-born San Francisco resident Divakaruni has acquired a receptive audience, which undoubtedly will greet this new work with enthusiasm. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Divakaruni's narrative elegance serves not to reduce the emotional impact of her fiction but rather to concentrate and intensify it. After two enormously successful novels, including the splendid Sister of My Heart (1998), she returns to the short-story form with which she had such success in Arranged Marriages (1995). Classically shaped but spiked with the unexpected, these potent tales portray families shattered by violence and stretched to the breaking point between the wildly disparate worlds of India and the U.S. Each story revolves around a reflective and strong-willed heroine, most of whom left India with the intention of living lives both fuller and freer than the traditionally restricted routines of their grandmothers and mothers, only to find themselves floundering, unsure of how to proceed, what to believe, and who they are. In "What the Body Knows," an Indian woman living in the U.S. almost loses the will to live after the birth of her first child. "The Blooming Season of Cacti" traces a young woman's journey from the shock of her mother's death in a Bombay riot to an Indian community in the California desert, where she is undone by her panicked choice of fantasy over intimacy. In "The Intelligence of Wild Things," a young woman living in California, whose mother is dying in Calcutta, muses on the Bengali word abhimaan, which describes a "mix of love and anger and hurt." This is the very turmoil Divakaruni captures so indelibly in stories about doting Indian grandparents and skittish American grandchildren, a young mother unsure about whether she can forgive her father for abandoning her and her mother, and a young Indian American woman who travels to India after a suicide attempt to try and recalibrate her life. These hauntingly beautiful stories of epiphany and catharsis place Divakaruni in the vanguard of fine literary writers who touch a broad spectrum of readers. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (April 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038549727X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385497275
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #971,187 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lyrical voyage of emotion and understanding., May 19, 2001

By	Denise Bentley "Kelsana" (The California Redwoods) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Divakaruni has done it again. The words simply flow as you read this book of short stories. I don't usually read short stories because it doesn't seem like there is enough time in 20 or so pages to become attached to a character but this author is the exception. Her stories are like short journeys that delve into the emotion of her characters leaving you closer to them than some authors can accomplish in an entire book. Each story is about a choice made, not always the best one for the moment but an adventure in living none-the-less.

In the first story she writes of a Grandmother who has emigrated from Calcutta to live in Sunnyvale, California with her son, his wife, and their two children. We are faced with her loneliness and yearning for a culture that is lost to her in this new country. I also moved to Sunnyvale from my home in New England and remember the feeling of displacement and longing I felt. I was an outsider who dressed differently and spoke with an accent; people were not always kind or receptive. I can only imagine how life changing it must be to come from another country; it is this emotion that the author expresses so clearly in not just the first story but throughout the book.

Divakaruni has enlightened us with her book of tales. She has made me feel at home in her characters heart. After reading her last book SISTER OF MY HEART, I realized that this author would always be my favorite, she is a master of her craft, and her new book has certainly not disappointed me. Kelsana 5/19/01

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lives of Strangers, July 19, 2002

By	JessH (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unknown Errors of Our Lives: Stories (Paperback)

"The Unknown Errors of Our Lives" is a collection of short stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni that focuses on Indian women and their immigrant experience in America. In many ways, the subject matter of these stories are similar to those of Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of the Maladies" (a favorite book of mine). Many of the stories in Unknown Errors also deal with marriages of different sorts and in different stages: arranged marriages, engagements, deteriorating relationships.

The first story in the book is entitled "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter". This is a touching story about an older widow who moves from India to live with her son's family in America. Her son tells her "We want you to be comfortable, Ma. To rest. That's why we brought you here to America." Her attempts to share stories of India and cook traditional meals and help out around the house are looked down upon of by her daughter-in-law and she begins to feel un-welcomed. Life with her son and grandchildren in America isn't what Mrs. Dutta imagined it would be. Through Divakaruni's writing, the reader can feel Mrs. Dutta's pain and disappointment.

As in "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" the story "The Intelligence of Wild Things" brings up issues of keeping Old World traditions alive after immigrating versus becoming Americanized. "The Intelligence of Wild Things" is about a woman who visits her younger brother, Tarun in Vermont. She discovers that his girlfriend is an American girl with "freckled skin and reddish-gold hair." She wonders how her brother who "had never wanted to come to America" has become so Americanized while she, who agreed to an arranged marriage in order to move to America, still clings to traditions she learned growing up in India.

"The Lives of Strangers" is one of my favorite stories from the collection. This story is about Leela, a young Indian woman from America who visits her aunt in India. They go on a pilgrimage in Kashmir with a group of women. One of these women is Mrs. Das whom the rest of the women believe was "born under an unlucky star" and therefor shun her due to a fear that her bad luck may rub off on them. Divakaruni does a fantastic job in this story portraying Leela's struggle with guilt and a conscience that is telling her to do what is right despite what others say.

Some stories in this collection are definitely stronger than others, but overall, the book offered an excellent look at the Indian immigrant experience from the female point of view.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars deep insights on the immigrant experience, April 24, 2001

By	"[e-mail]" (Houston) - See all my reviews

This new collection of achingly beautiful stories from the author of Sister of my Heart is an elegant articulation of the immigrant experience and its varieties. It goes deeply into what it means to be displaced, uprooted, re-rooted either by time, place or relationships. The most touching story in the collection is entitled "Mrs Dutta Writes a Letter" which tells of a mother now joined to her beloved son's family in America. It depicts in such gorgeous details the mother's sense of dislocation, and her desire to put up a nice front for her son and those she left behind in India. When she finally got around to writing a letter as a response to a dear friend, she could not keep up with the "front" anymore and ended pouring out her real self to her friend in her letter. The story is a powerful evocation of the embodied interplay between duty and loyalty of a mother to a son, or son to a mother, love between them, tradition, the sense of being different, the sense of connection or absence thereof, and the pursuit of happiness, among others. It's got all the elements of what it means to be an immigrant, and how all these factors - love, compassion, duty, tradition, etc get into the mix. Another great moving story is "The Intelligence of Wild Things. It is a story of a sister who visited her brother to inform him, after long years of no communicaton between the brother and her mother, that their mother is dying. It is about failed communication, but it is also about the ways we communicate successfully without fully knowing it, as if inherent in us. Although "Indian" in setting, this could easily well be about anybody, for after all, the world has become so mobile, everyone becomes an "immigrant".