Unaccustomed Earth

by Jhumpa Lahiri

book data

8,935 ratings, 4.16 average rating, 2,493 reviews (more data...)

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published

April 1st 2008 (first published 2007) by Knopf Canada

binding

Hardcover, 352 pages

isbn

0676979343 (isbn13: 9780676979343)

description

Knopf Canada is proud to welcome this bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author with eight dazzling stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle t...more

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04/02/08

Roopsi rated it:

bookshelves: diaspora, poco_lit

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: Orientalists, Aunt-Jhumpas, and South Asian specialists with no other choice

I have had a long, complicated relationship with Jhumpa Lahiri's work. In an early encounter, Interpreter of Maladies was put on a syllabus (note the passive voice) for an AP English Literature course I was teaching. I had moved to a new school--where, I am certain, I was hired for the express purpose of the browning of the faculty--and the department chair and other AP teacher thought I might feel more comfortable with a book by one of my people. They didn't quite say it like that, but it was ...more

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04/19/08

Molly rated it:

Read in April, 2008

The title of Lahiri’s latest book—Unaccustomed Earth—refers to the first story in this collection but also to a motif dominating all of the stories: tales about a world unaccustomed to the shifts and changes taking place on its surface, a world uncomfortable with the destruction and loss brought on by hurricanes and tsunamis, unfamiliar with modern diseases and traumas, and unsure about the class and cultural conflicts that dominate relationships in the lives of Lahiri’s characters. The ...more The title of Lahiri’s latest book—Unaccustomed Earth—refers to the first story in this collection but also to a motif dominating all of the stories: tales about a world unaccustomed to the shifts and changes taking place on its surface, a world uncomfortable with the destruction and loss brought on by hurricanes and tsunamis, unfamiliar with modern diseases and traumas, and unsure about the class and cultural conflicts that dominate relationships in the lives of Lahiri’s characters. The earth that we now inhabit, Lahiri seems to be saying, is one that our ancestors would not recognize.
Despite the uniqueness of modern society, the emotions and situations that Lahiri depicts are universal. Since reading her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1999 collection, Interpreter of Maladies, I have believed that Lahiri is one of the best writers of our generation, and—like her 2003 novel, The Namesake—Unaccustomed Earth provides only more evidence of this fact. What makes Lahiri’s work so accomplished and simultaneously riveting is that, unlike her literary peers, Lahiri is more concerned with substance than style. Her stories are about real people rather than quirky characters or odd situations. These are people we know, people we love and hate. The stories are about the people we care about the most letting us down because they are incapable of having healthy relationships— like Rahul in “Only Goodness” and Farouk in “Nobody’s Business.” And they are about parents who return to us or finally abandon us like the father in “Year’s End.”
There are no gimmicks in Lahiri’s prose, no writing with a capital W, the kind that so annoyingly draws more attention to itself than its characters. This is simply straightforward storytelling about issues to which we all can relate. And, in that way, every one of the eight stories in Unaccustomed Earth does exactly what Stephen King said great stories do when he was hawking the 2008 edition of Best American Short Stories in The New York Times Book Review last fall: they grab us and make us hold on tight, they come at us “full-bore, like a big, hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky.”
But it’s not only that Lahiri pulls us in emotionally, it’s that she makes us reconsider our choices and reflect on them by making connections between her fictional characters and our own experiences. She navigates the personal and the political, and the stories touch on a variety of issues we care about: marriage, divorce, death, disease, dislocation. As in her first collection, the stories in Unaccustomed Earth take on the contemporary question of liminality and hyphenation: Who are we when we are not one person, but not another? When we are both at the same time? What does it mean to be from a place but not of it? Why do we resist the unknown? In “Going Ashore,” she demonstrates how it is that one might find oneself without a cultural home, nomadic not by choice but by circumstance. In some ways, the difference between this collection and The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies—which both seem, in some ways, to wax nostalgic about immigration—is that Lahiri is more antagonistic about issues of diaspora, not only bringing them out of the closet and wearing them in public, but also getting them dirty, ripping the seams out, and showing us how they’re constructed.
An inherent criticism of those who resist assimilation is an underlying premise of the book. Unlike one of the most moving stories in her first collection, “The Third and Final Continent”—which, in some ways, reads like a love letter to arranged marriage—several of Lahiri’s stories in this book take aim at the practice: “Heaven-Hell” tells the story of a woman who tries to burn herself alive after falling in love with her husband’s young protégé, a man closer to her in age than her own spouse. And in the title story, the father of the protagonist falls in love with another woman after his wife’s death—the first time he has ever truly been in love—an emotional shift that allows him to connect more fully with his daughter. This theme reappears in the three outstanding stories which make up Part Two: “Hema and Kaushik.” In these connected stories, Lahiri gives the reader not one, but two marriages based on convenience rather than love.
But Lahiri never hits us over the head with these messages, and sometimes they are so subtle that we have to be on the lookout in order to see the meaning that lies under each story’s surface. Nancy Zafris, former fiction editor of The Kenyon Review, said once that great stories “must always be telling two or more stories in a way that disguises for a while the real story,” and Lahiri has learned this lesson well, layering every story with numerous complexities.
In “Nobody’s Business,” an American graduate student discovers that his Indian housemate’s boyfriend, an Egyptian, has been cheating on her for years. When the American inserts himself into this drama, he finds his help is unwanted. Even though it is the philandering boyfriend who tells him, “I didn’t invite you here,” the reader still feels violated by the American’s unwanted presence. On the one hand, we hope the American can help his Indian housemate, but at the same time, we want to tell him to get lost, raising the question of whether it is better to turn a blind eye to the problems of others or try to help them out of the messes in which they find themselves. There are other implicit criticisms of the U.S. in the book as well. According to the narrator of “Once in a Lifetime,” America is known first as a place where class “differences were irrelevant,” but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that under the surface, the petty jealousies and judgments that affect relationships between people from different social strata still fester, a theme also echoed in “A Choice of Accommodations” earlier in the book.
The stories similarly criticize human selfishness—showing parents who put their own needs first, children who are hung up on petty resentments, partners who feel little for their spouses, individuals who use each other for their own gain. And like people who are honest about their vulnerability, their fallibility, the reader cares for these flawed characters even more deeply as a result, grieving when they grieve, loving when they love. This unyielding sense of empathy is accomplished most powerfully in the stories about Hema and Kaushik. After uncovering a row of tombstones in the woods behind young Hema’s suburban home, a sixteen-year-old Kaushik tells her that he wishes that his family wasn’t Hindu so that his mother could be buried somewhere, a place where presumably they could—like the family he has uncovered under snow and fallen leaves—all be together again. It is this scene that stays with me long after I have finished the book, calling to mind again and again the metaphor uniting the collection—earth that is not accustomed—and raising the question of how we push this world, and those who inhabit it, to accommodate our all-too human whims and desires.

This review appears in the current issue of Cairn 43: The St. Andrews Review(less)

Like this review? yes (12 people liked it)

3 comments

04/08/08

Sonal rated it:

As I progressed through the first four stories, I became more and more angry. I couldn't understand why Lahiri would put out another book that was almost identical to to her first. She seemed to have retreated even further into her "safe space", writing only about Bengali Americans who study at ivy league schools, have well educated albeit maladjusted parents and struggle with redefining relationships after relocation. I expected a lot more when I read the title and its reference to...more

Like this review? yes (11 people liked it)

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08/14/08

alex rated it:

Read in September, 2008

recommended to alex by: alyse

lahiri's writing style is beautiful. while someone once described it as "relentless detail," i like to think of it otherwise. that said, there was something nagging me while reading it that i could neither shake nor put my finger on. then i figured it out. there are two things that bothered me about this book. 1) lahiri seems to be almost obsessed with elite private universities. not a story goes by that doesn't mention harvard, mit, bryn mawr, swarthmore, etc. it's excessive. accordin...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

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07/31/08

jo rated it:

bookshelves: asian-american, blew-my-mind, im-emigration-colonial, short-stories, south-asia

Read in December, 2008

i think that, as short story collections go, this one is up there with the great masterpieces -- flannery o'connor, hawthorne, raymond carver, nadine gordimer, alice munro (the writers who come to mind are the ones who straightforwardly explore the torments of the human heart). the most extraordinary feeling i have about it is that i glided from story to story without having much of a sense of interruption. the stories flow into each other, having to do with people who are different (in age, gen...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

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06/07/08

Ian rated it:

Read in June, 2008

A real disappointment after her first two books. Doing away with both the emotional gut-punches of displacement and desperation found in "Interpreter of Maladies" and the elegiac generational sweep of "The Namesake," Lahiri in "Unaccustomed Earth" zeroes in on the least interesting dimension of her usual subjects: the interior monologues of fully assimilated, second-generation Indian-Americans who are ungratefully dissatisfied with their lives of privilege. Her form...more

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05/01/08

Danica rated it:

Read in May, 2008

To begin, I must disclose that I am a huge Jhumpa Lahiri fan. To me, she is one of the only authors who comes even close to articulating my experience as a child born and raised in the U.S. by immigrant parents, constantly straddling two worlds. I really enjoyed this book -- not nearly as much as I adored "The Namesake" (one of my all-time favorite books!), but more than her collection of short stories, "The Interpreter of Maladies."

This book is a collection of ...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

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04/25/08

Ukrainer rated it:

Read in April, 2008

After weeks of waiting anxiously, of reading about how good the book is, I finally got my hands on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.

The beauty of Lahiri’s writing is in the ordinariness of it. She has an elegant style but does nothing to draw undue attention to the writing itself; she employs no tricks that distract from her narrative. The stories are also about ordinary topics, about regular people. It is in the simplicity of the scenarios that universal truths resound.
...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

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04/21/08

Kristen rated it:

Read in April, 2008

Ever since I read Lahiri's first collection of stories, "Interpreter of Maladies," when it was published some years ago, I've had a hard time figuring out just why I find her fiction so incredibly appealing and moving and memorable. Her writing style isn't particularly innovative, and she sticks to a fairly narrow set of themes: the impact of immigration on those who immigrate and their children, generally viewed through the experiences of Indians who move to the U.S., specifically New...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

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04/08/08

Binal rated it:

bookshelves: favourites

Read in April, 2008

I have to admit that I was awaiting this book for many months and started reading it with a preconceived notion that the literary journey I was about to embark upon was one of immense finesse and depth. Some might argue that this mindset might cast a cloak on the negative qualities of the novel thereby making the stories more appealing. I've thought about this and beg to differ. Expectations of this height are hard to live by and many a (famous) novel have fallen short. Unaccustomed Earth did no...more I have to admit that I was awaiting this book for many months and started reading it with a preconceived notion that the literary journey I was about to embark upon was one of immense finesse and depth. Some might argue that this mindset might cast a cloak on the negative qualities of the novel thereby making the stories more appealing. I've thought about this and beg to differ. Expectations of this height are hard to live by and many a (famous) novel have fallen short. Unaccustomed Earth did not.
What attracts me to Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction is that I often find traces of myself and people I know in them. It's comforting to know that your trials and fears are not unique, that there can be meaning even in the mundane, mystery in the seemingly known. What started off with The Interpretor of Maladies, continued with The Namesake and found fruition in Unaccustomed Earth is a sensitive yet intense rendering of the intricate working of the heart and mind. perhaps the most poignant story of the 8-story collection, Only goodness is the story of a sister dealing with guilt and concern over her kid brother's alcoholism. Lahiri has a way of drawing the readers into the minds of her characters and making them a part of the thought process, both said and unsaid. It was almost as if Sudha's growing guilt and worry, embarrassment at her wedding, her longing for Rahul when he disappears, her sheer panic at finding her baby alone in the tub and her final resolve to prioritize her child and husband's needs over her brother's were all mine.
What makes Lahiri's characters so memorable is their imperfection. They don't always do or say the right things. Many among us have fallen hard for the wrong man like Sang does in Nobody's Business. Many among us have felt an attraction outside wedlock like in Hell-Heaven. Many among us have even been caught between the sense of responsibility towards parents vs wanting to hold on to our independence and known way on life as Ruma does in the tittle story. Fate, death, passion, confusion, a search for isolation and rebellion have been as much a part of our lives as they have of Hema and Kaushik's in the trio of stories at the end.
The prose is packed with emotional wisdom. The only not so positive quality that struck me is the sameness of the cultural backgrounds of the characters -- all highly educated Bengalis. Perhaps that is what Lahiri is intimately familiar with. The central theme is how these people deal with the crosscurrents of traditions and displacement of identity, how they strive to define their individuality and how they fight to cling on to the familiar. Assumptions are often negated and they are forced to deal with their new environs and new set of truths.
Yes, one might argue that "nothing happens" but how often do life altering incidents happen in our lives anyway? Isn't life woven from single treads of everyday experiences, simple joys, of innocence, attachments and fears?(less)

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03/19/08

Lena rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

In Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri returns to the short story format of her Pulitzer prize-winning first book, Interpreter of Maladies. Like IoM, the stories in UE explore the experiences of Bengali immigrants in America, and the ways in which the intersection of cultures plays out in the lives of those who do not fully belong to either land.

Each story focuses a lens on a different aspect of the Indian immigrant experience. In the title piece, the fully Americanized daughte...more

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04/16/08

Teresa rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265730)

Read in July, 2008

Perhaps a new term needs to be used for short stories such as these. Each one is jam-packed with details but never bog down; each one is as dense and rich as a novel. The writing never falters; it is always smooth, flowing and self-assured.

Of course the last 3 stories could be a novella, and we are lucky not have to buy a separate book to experience this part of the book.

Wonderful characters, wonderful stories, wonderful writing.

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02/26/09

Lucy rated it:

Read in February, 2009

Many classical composers were masters in the art of variation on a theme in music. Mozart showed off just how many things you could do with the tune "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Jhumpa Lahiri has applied the same principle to the short story and produced a brilliant work of art.

I am not a particular fan of the short story, but Lahiri has convinced me once again that I could be. Her genius, I believe, is that she doesn't waste her time recreating the wheel. She has ...more

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08/25/08

Ben Babcock rated it:

bookshelves: 2008-read, 2008-top10, anthologies, favourites, from-library, indian-fiction

Read in September, 2008

I went into this book not knowing what to expect, and I loved it. Jhumpa Lahiri creates timeless families that straddle the cultural divide between America and India. She captures the conflict of growing up as one tries to balance one's parent's wishes with the influence of one's heritage and the culture of one's surroundings.

Of the first part of the book, I loved "Unaccustomed Earth", "Hell-Heaven", and "Only Goodness." The other two stories were gre...more

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06/08/08

Ami rated it:

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: anyone who liked The Namesake and people who enjoy reading about Indian-American culture

What I like about this book from Lahiri's other works is she's begun to branch out into new themes and even new settings (her title story takes place in Seattle, rather than the Boston/New York area). I'm not much of a person to be able to comment on her stories objectively: most of them are written for people of Indian descent (like myself), who were born and raised in the States. Like many of her characters, I've felt exiled between the two cultures and unsure as to where I fit in with both of...more What I like about this book from Lahiri's other works is she's begun to branch out into new themes and even new settings (her title story takes place in Seattle, rather than the Boston/New York area). I'm not much of a person to be able to comment on her stories objectively: most of them are written for people of Indian descent (like myself), who were born and raised in the States. Like many of her characters, I've felt exiled between the two cultures and unsure as to where I fit in with both of them, sometimes wondering which was the dominant culture. It's somewhat odd to think that almost every story I have read in this book so far contains a theme that has related to some point of my life: a childhood rejection of the Indian culture and values my parents tried to hard to instill in me, only to later embrace those values as my parents became more American; a girl's awkward relationship with her father that she loves dearly but cannot talk to because of cultural and gender gaps; being the only Indian person around and having people tell me the accent on my English is very good because of the assumption that I was also born in India (that's why I look Indian, right?); an older sister realizing the limits of her responsibility to her much younger, selfish brother; learning as I grow older that my mother is not all that different from me, despite being a world apart.

The long-awaited discovery has been seeing Lahiri grow as a writer and explore new boundaries. She's certainly no Salman Rushdie when it comes to talking about isolation and cross-cultural frustrations, but she is able to delve deep into the problems faced by immigrants and their children who always wonder if they ever truly "fit in" to the strange land they live in. However, she falls short in venturing out too much - she's still sticking to that she which knows best. I can understand a writer wanting to write about things they know about, but I sometimes wonder how boring it would be to have Lahiri at a dinner party. Every story in this book concerns a Bengali, who is grappling in some form with their higher education (whether by facing the choice of dropping out of an Ivy League school or rejecting their parents' desires for them to become a doctor) and marrying a non-Indian. After finding similarities between "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Namesake", the themes in "Unaccustomed Earth" are refreshingly new, but the characters that explore those themes remain consistent throughout. Perhaps by keeping the characters static, Lahiri is hoping her readers may delve deeper into the themes. Or perhaps I'm being a bit generous with this review.(less)

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04/21/08

Suzanne rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2008

I really enjoy Lahiri's works. Every word, every image.
Yet, when I read Goodreads Reviews written by Bengali
(? maybe, maybe not) readers, I can understand their criticisms. There does seem to be a formula. The issue of conflict in 1st generation parents with their Westernized children, the fact that almost all of these characters have attended the very best Ivy League and 1st tier universities in the US and have performed exceptionally. (no mention of summer jobs, no mention o...more I really enjoy Lahiri's works. Every word, every image.
Yet, when I read Goodreads Reviews written by Bengali
(? maybe, maybe not) readers, I can understand their criticisms. There does seem to be a formula. The issue of conflict in 1st generation parents with their Westernized children, the fact that almost all of these characters have attended the very best Ivy League and 1st tier universities in the US and have performed exceptionally. (no mention of summer jobs, no mention of student loans or how this education was financed) They all live in the Eastern US.( NY and New England) like the author. They become graduate students, phD students studying and excelling in their academic lives, yet struggling within their individual personal life.
In this work, in the short story with the cover title, 'Unaccustomed Earth' , the "father" more or less advises his daughter not to "give up" her professional life for the child she has, and the one she now carries, because she has worked so long for this. For what? The career? Or being a mother? Or both? This has become a classic struggle hasn't it?
One reviewer suggested that Lahiri is popular to "Non-Indians" because she gives us a glimpse into a life that has been shrouded, one that we Westerners know so little about. True enough. I will agree that my appreciation of her writing includes that component. Has her writing contributed enough information about that life that we can now suggest "stereotype"?
It is a discussable point.
I will leave it at this. The short story form is one in which there are few Masters. Lahiri is at that gate. She is an excellent writer, one who creates a sense of scene and smell, with visual, auditory and olfactory images that stay with you long after the book has been closed.
Nonetheless, this is work #3. She needs to broaden her scope in her next work so she does not become "the Indian writer", something i expect she would view as a personal failure. She has unveiled the mysteries of food, family and tradition in her works...she does not need to define them again next time, but just assume, that we know. And we do, we know more, thanks to her.

(less)

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04/17/08

Dixie Diamond rated it:

bookshelves: asian, fiction, short-story

I kind of liked this. The writing is good but the pace of the stories is v e r y s l o w . . . it seems to take ages to get to the ending. This would be OK except that the endings are really not that astounding; you're left with less of an "Oh, my God" feeling than a "well, duh; what did she expect?" one. The bodies of the stories would have been more in proportion to the ends if the writer had not worked so hard to draw them out. They end up feeling overwritten, and all...more I kind of liked this. The writing is good but the pace of the stories is v e r y s l o w . . . it seems to take ages to get to the ending. This would be OK except that the endings are really not that astounding; you're left with less of an "Oh, my God" feeling than a "well, duh; what did she expect?" one. The bodies of the stories would have been more in proportion to the ends if the writer had not worked so hard to draw them out. They end up feeling overwritten, and all for nothing.

One also gets the impression that this is more an exercise of personal therapy than writing intended for an audience. The stories are all pretty similar in theme--distant, old-country parents being disappointed by their first-generation Americanized children; and Americanized children trapped between two cultures--with variations that are, ultimately, trivial. All right, already; get some counseling and move on.

Finally, as a personal irritation, the protagonists of the stories are all weak, indecisive, uninteresting people who cannot stand up either to their Indian elders or the European-Americans in their lives, even European-Americans who are not out to victimize them. If you are so bland and spineless and have no identity apart from that which your unappreciative parents force on you, small wonder you're not happy in your life. There seems to be no middle ground between being your parents' overachieving dream child and being a grand failure (in this case, one character is an alcoholic and one is used and crushed by a worthless boyfriend).

No, I'm not Indian, but I don't think the issues at hand are really Indian-specific. Lots of children of overambitious parents have problems. My mother went through much the same thing as the only one in her blue-collar family to get an advanced degree and leave the geographical area where her entire family had lived for 300 years.

My problem with this set of stories is that the protagonists all seem so powerless and hollow. It seems more like a high-school girl's melodramatic attempt at writing adult life than a real adult's perspective.(less)

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04/14/08

Molly rated it:

Lahiri’s new stories, like the Victorian naturalist novels she read while working on them, are all about what her characters do not do and say, how they ultimately, tragically fail to connect with their parents, spouses, children, and soulmates. In other words, these stories lack the scope and the finely drawn class politics of her first collection: like many giants of the short story world, Lahiri brings our attention more than once to the problem of alcoholism in the Ivy League, and deals so...more

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12/31/07

Tanya Tanya Tanya! rated it:

Read in December, 2007

I feel completely gutted and need to go back and read this again.

Lahiri always leaves me feeling too emotional for my own good and I love it. She takes you to this place of discomfort and displacement within relationships with other people and relationships with culture.

The short stories in the first half of the book leave me wanting more of the characters lives. I simultaneously devoured them and didn't want them to end. They were as good, if not better than her previ...more

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07/02/08

Danielle rated it:

I haven't been a huge Jhumpa Lahiri fan in the past-- her stories were going to merit an entire chapter in my imaginary work of cultural criticism "Ethnicity is Not a Plot," but this collection totally won me over. I'm not sure I can put a finger on what was so compelling about it, but things were just working. The last section of linked stories, which could have easily devolved into movie of the week territory was utterly compelling, and I am sort of embarassed to say, made me a littl...more

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"He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and i quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself i like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera." More quotes...