Sonal's review
Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sonal's review
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sonal's review
rating:
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 Nathaniel Hawthorne's quote. I expected she'd do justice to the idea, but nope! The themes are repetitive and hackneyed, the female characters are extremely weak (which bothered my feminist sentimentality no end) and alcohol abuse seems to have become her chosen metaphor for all inner turmoil. In fact, she doesn't even do justice to the same "hackneyed themes" - she addresses relationships (father-daughter, brother-sister etc) but doesn't address any of the other usual suspects whe...more
