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Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries)…
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Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries) (original 2008; edition 2009)

by Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5,5431991,842 (4.13)372
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… (more)
Member:RipettaPress
Title:Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage Contemporaries)
Authors:Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)
Info:Vintage (2009), Edition: Reprint, 352 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:None

Work Information

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008)

  1. 100
    Interpreter of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (reenum)
  2. 50
    The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (reenum)
  3. 20
    Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (Inesdelreves)
    Inesdelreves: Un incidente sin importancia desencadena una verdadera hecatombe en el seno de la familia. Una novela sobre la importancia del lugar que cada cual ocupa en el mundo
  4. 20
    A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: Stories by John Murray (ShortStoryLover)
    ShortStoryLover: Murray's style of writing in this collection of short stories is similarly subtle to Jhumpa Lahiri's in her short story collections. Several of his stories feature Indian-Americans, and two are set in India.
  5. 10
    Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (chrisharpe)
  6. 00
    A Person of Interest by Susan Choi (tangentialine)
  7. 00
    Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss (Maiasaura)
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» See also 372 mentions

English (188)  Spanish (4)  Dutch (3)  German (2)  Catalan (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (199)
Showing 1-5 of 188 (next | show all)
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. ( )
  HelenBaker | Dec 7, 2023 |
I wish the beautiful first story had been a full novel, as the rest of the pieces in this collection did not meet the first one's high standard. ( )
  lschiff | Sep 24, 2023 |
This book has received numerous words of praise, so much so, that there's really nothing more I can add, except to say that they are well deserved . ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
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. ( )
  banjo123 | Jul 4, 2023 |
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. ( )
  Anita_Pomerantz | Mar 23, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 188 (next | show all)
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 canā€™t 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.
added by aksanil | editThe New York Times (Mar 12, 2008)
 

» Add other authors (13 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Jhumpa Lahiriprimary authorall editionscalculated
Choudhury, SaritaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Naidu, AjayNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Customs House
Dedication
For my parents and for my sister

Vintage 2009 edition: For Octavio, for Noor
First words
After her mother's death, Ruma's father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began traveling in Europe, a continent he'd never seen.
Quotations
ā€¦I gathered from my parentsā€™ talk that it was regarded as a wavering, a weakness. ā€œThey should have known its impossible to go back,ā€ they said to their friends, condemning your parents for having failed at both ends. We had stuck it out as immigrants while you had fled; had we been the ones to go back to India, my parents seemed to suggest, we would have stuck it out there as well.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

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

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Book description
CONTENTS:
Unaccustomed earth
Hell-Heaven
A choice of accommodations
Only goodness
Nobody's business
Once in a lifetime
Year's end
Going ashore

n the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father who carefully tends her garden-where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. In "A Choice of Accommodations," a couple's romantic getaway weekend takes a dark turn at a party that lasts deep into the night. In "Only Goodness," a woman 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 "Hema and Kaushik," a trio of linked stories-a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love and fate-we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one fateful winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with the author's signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is the work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
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