Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
Originally published in hardcover in

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If you asked for a one-word description of her newest book I would choose “nice.” This is a nice collection with at times beautiful writing, to be expected from the author of the Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies. If you allowed me a second word to describe this collection I would choose “homage” -- a devotion to the Indian transition to America, on the surface at least.


Lahiri's newest collection starts off nicely and gets stronger as I progressed through the stories. I never once thought of giving this 5 stars, though at times thought of 3 stars. I guess my gut feeling is that the stereotypical ingredients of Bengali life and post-graduate studies grew tiresome. I know writers are many times taught to write what you know, but I feel like Lahiri is capable enough of a writer to not need to reach for those tools as often. 


But in the end I highly recommend this collection, especially for those who enjoy her previous works. A must-read.


Amazon description - From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.


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.