Using things to talk about people

Dear Reader,

Jhumpa Lahiri writes about Indian immigrants in the USA. Sometimes it's just a setting, a colourful backdrop for the stories that happen everywhere: Couples fall apart of grow together. Affairs begin and end. People are thankful or thankless. A man and a woman, each in their own unhappy marriage, meet and fleetingly believe that the other will make them happy.

Sometimes, starting a new life in a dfferent country is the core of the story. People long for home or make themselves at home. Children go to American school, learn about American history and later go trick-or-treating with American friends while their parents are huddling around the TV, following the news about a distant war in a country their children only know fom a map.

Lahiri doesn't create characters, she writes about people. She doesn't tell stories so much as talk about ordinary things and let her readers see for themselves what is special about a silver dress that always slips from the hanger.

Of course we could start comparing Jhumpa Lahiri to other short story writers. Alice Munro comes to mind. But I'd rather compare this author to herself. In fact, I'm curious how her style carries over into a full-length novel. The Namesake, published in 2003, is already considered a modern classic. You can expect a review on this blog next month.

Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran

Interpreter of Maladies: Short Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

first published in 1999

ISBN: 978-0007718696
Available on Amazon.co.uk.