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Loading... Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries) (original 2008; edition 2009)by Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)
Work InformationUnaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I continue to be impressed by this writer's skill. I had not realised that this was a book of short stories. In the first section the stories are linked by the theme of inter-racial marriages, in this case Bengali/American, often successful and each beautifully drawn, that I was quickly absorbed in each new tale. The second section is a series of interlinked stories following two people from their initial meeting in childhood to their eventual reconnection as adults. It is very well executed. ( ) She is a good writer. All of the stories are about Indian immigrant families, and parent/child relations in some way, as well as exploring love and marriage. The first story, I think my favorite, was about a young mother, living in a Seattle suburb, as a stay-at-home mother, who is visited by her widowed father. The story alternates between their two viewpoints; she asks him to move in with them, but he doesn't want to. In general there is a distance and a negativity between the characters; all of whom are financially privileged and graduates of top colleges. There is very little lightness or levity, and I ended most of the stories feeling sad and a bit hopeless. Fair enough, life can be sad, and the immigrant experience is hard. This book is a very engaging series of short stories that are also woven together. If you are a Lahiri fan, you'll love this book as she has the same brilliant style (as the Namesake) with many wonderful telling details. The individual story quality was variable, but I had no problem finishing up this book in a matter of days.
There is much cultural news in these precisely observed studies of modern-day Bengali-Americans ā many of them Ivy-league strivers ensconced in prosperous suburbs who canāt quite overcome the tug of traditions nurtured in Calcutta. With quiet artistry and tender sympathy, Lahiri creates an impressive range of vivid characters ā young and old, male and female, self-knowing and self-deluding ā in engrossing stories that replenish the classic themes of domestic realism: loneliness, estrangement and family discord. ContainsHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
Short Stories.
HTML:From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prizeā??winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But heā??s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair heā??s keeping all to himself. In ā??A Choice of Accommodations,ā? a husbandā??s attempt to turn an old friendā??s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In ā??Only Goodness,ā? a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in ā??Hema and Kaushik,ā? a trio of linked storiesā??a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fateā??we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings t No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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