Diversity in All Forms! discussion
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Interpreter of Maladies
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Interpreter of Maladies (June 2018)
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Mariah Roze
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rated it 3 stars
May 25, 2018 07:37AM
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Great! I loved this book. The first story is a bit depressing, but others are more upbeat. I think the last one was my favorite. She gives us contrasting views of many situations in different stories. It's satisfying at the end to go back and look for the similarities and contrasts. Many of the stories can be paired with others.
My local book club discussed this book last winter, and we all liked it. There were a few characters (and a favorite phrase) that came up months later when discussing other books. I'm very glad I read it. I need to get a new copy to remind myself of the titles and character's names.
This is a book that we can discuss one story at a time. I recommend using Spoiler covers.
Story 1 - What do you think of the way the couple is finally communicating during the power outages? At the very beginning I thought , oh-oh, this is looking a little familiar (me on goodreads and him doing something else).
It doesn't look like anyone is reading this one (yet). Many of you already read her other books. I missed out on that. If you haven't read her other books though, I'd really recommend trying a few of her short stories. I'm blanking on the story titles at the moment, but if you wanted to sample just a few, I'd read the first, the last, and the title story.
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The author is a fantastic writer and I always enjoy reading her work. However, this book confused me. It jumped around a ton with the characters; going back in time and telling different stories. I had a hard time figuring out who they were talking about and how everyone was linked. The stories were enjoyable and the writing was great. However, I just couldn't keep everyone straight and I didn't understand why all the different stories were being told and that's why this book was 3 stars to me.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
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I thought it was really interesting that the couple was able to better communicate in the dark. I understand why though. Its like talking over the internet is easier than in person. I wonder whatever happened with this couple.
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If you haven't read her other books though, I'd really recommend trying a fe..."
Btw, it is never too late to go back and join in the book discussions. I'm two months late on this book haha :p
Mariah wrote: "Finished this book! Here is my review:The author is a fantastic writer and I always enjoy reading her work. However, this book confused me. It jumped around a ton with the characters; going back ..."
It's a collection of individual short stories not a novel, and none of the stories have the same characters or settings. However, there are many common themes in the stories, and contrasts between them to show different views.
A problem with cross cultural literature is that people might assume that the story or novel is representative of people in that culture. Chimamanda Adichie talks about this in relation to a story about an abusive man in one of her books. People have misinterpreted this as meaning that all men in the culture were abusive. If you only read one story or book about a culture, you get a skewed view. So Lahiri combats this by giving us stories that show a range of people. She gives us two stories about Indian neighborhoods, one was very caring, and one was uncaring. We could also find caring and uncaring neighborhoods in the US or in any other part of the world. She shows us happy couples and unhappy couples, beginnings and endings, immigrants, natives, faithful people and adulterers, etc.
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