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 daughter of a widower struggles with the traditional Indian duty to invite her father to live with her family. Other stories look at a son coming to terms with a life that did not live up to his parent’s expectations; an accomplished sister’s troubled relationship with the brother who failed to find his own way, and a mother’s struggle to find meaning in a culture awash in the freedom that she was denied in her own.

Lahiri’s smooth, rich prose is as good as ever here, and within just a few lines of each tale I felt drawn in to the lives of people I enjoyed getting to know. Though all of the main characters are defined in some way by their heritage, their struggles felt more universal to me than her previous books, not quite so exotic as before. Her tale told from the perspective of an American PhD candidate who struggles with information about his Indian housemate’s Egyptian boyfriend was particularly effective in showing the universal emotions underneath cultural differences.

Though the luxurious writing made this book a genuine pleasure to read, these stories live on the more melancholic end of the emotional spectrum. Though they may not always be happy, they are incredibly rich, and I am glad to have read them.