I have to admit that I was awaiting this book for many months and started reading it with a preconceived notion that the literary journey I was about to embark upon was one of immense finesse and depth. Some might argue that this mindset might cast a cloak on the negative qualities of the novel thereby making the stories more appealing. I've thought about this and beg to differ. Expectations of this height are hard to live by and many a (famous) novel have fallen short. Unaccustomed Earth did no...

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 Ha...

I’m gonna make this review lopsided right out the gate because I want to say the short story “Hell-Heaven” in this collection blew me away, gave me hope to live, and reminded me of the power of fiction at its finest. In the story, we follow a Bengali family living in the United States and what happens when the mother within the family falls in love with a fellow Bengali man who inserts himself into their dynamic, all through the perspective of the young daughter within the family. I think “Hell-...

Mysterious are the paths that our readings take. I was not planning to read this, having read three books by Lahiri already. But then I learnt about a literary association that offers writing workshops as well as a Reading Book Club. Even if I felt I was stepping out of the reading directions I had chartered in my mind for my short term bookish future, my curiosity took the upper hand and I signed up for the Book Club. And this was the February choice. Lahiri’s writing is so pristine and so flow...

I have often stated that I do not enjoy short stories, but although this is designated as such, it oversimplifies the content of this book. With understated elegance, Lahiri has drawn in the reader to become immersed in tales of families, lovers and friends. She has the unique ability to simply, but fascinatingly communicate the features of the characters' behaviors, thoughts and emotions. In addition, she is able to express such dimensions so wellthat I felt I had become acquainted with these p...

Perhaps a new term needs to be used for short stories such as these. Each one is jam-packed with details that never bog down; each one is as dense and rich as a novel. The writing never falters; it is always smooth, flowing and self-assured.Of course the last 3 stories could be a novella, and we are lucky not to have to buy a separate book to experience them.Wonderful characters, wonderful stories, wonderful writing.

Eight short stories of remarkable depth, richness and resonance. Part one consists of five stand-alone stories, some of which have the density of novellas; part two consists of three stories that chronicle several decades in the lives of two characters whose lives have been fatefully intertwined.Lahiri's protagonists might all be Bengalis from India taking root in America and then often abroad, but their secrets, hopes and dreams are universal. The stories' endings are particularly powerful, ful...

A real disappointment after her first two books. Doing away with both the emotional gut-punches of displacement and desperation found in "Interpreter of Maladies" and the elegiac generational sweep of "The Namesake," Lahiri in "Unaccustomed Earth" zeroes in on the least interesting dimension of her usual subjects: the interior monologues of fully assimilated, second-generation Indian-Americans who are ungratefully dissatisfied with their lives of privilege. Her formerly melancholic insight and p...

These stories are about Bengali immigrants from the Bengal area of India, around Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). But these folks are not urban slumdogs or even rural slumdogs, arriving with manure on their shoes. These are high-end folks with PhD's and MD's who grew up speaking English in India and who came to the USA to be doctors, professors and engineers in the high-tech beltway bandit firms around Boston. There is a lot of local color of the modern Boston suburbs. The Bengalis live in upscale s...

"It didn't matter where she was in the world, or whether or not she was dying; she had always given everything to make her homes beautiful, always drawn strength from her things, her walls. But Kaushik never fully trusted the places he'd lived, never turned to them for refuge. From childhood, he realized now, he was always happiest to be outside, away from the private detritus of life."In each of the eight stories in this collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, the characters

Lahiri's always going to write beautiful, dense stories but many of the stories felt very similar, same settings, same cultural clashes, same upper middle class, exclusive college educated people angst. Nonetheless, I quite enjoyed the book. I would read it again.

Unaccustomed Earth is Jhumpa Lahiri's yet another collection of most dazzling short-stories of all times making it evident the umpteenth time the kind of prodigious skills she portrays with her art of putting together in words the distressed hearts and confused minds of her characters that are struggling in unknown lands, striving to accept outlandish ways while clutching the bag of their traditional ways close to their hearts and ending up in those neverlands where they find themselves still sl...

i think that, as short story collections go, this one is up there with the great masterpieces -- flannery o'connor, hawthorne, raymond carver, nadine gordimer, alice munro (the writers who come to mind are the ones who straightforwardly explore the torments of the human heart). the most extraordinary feeling i have about it is that i glided from story to story without having much of a sense of interruption. the stories flow into each other, having to do with people who are different (in age, gen...

About one month ago I read her “Interpreter of Maladies” and gave it 5 stars, and I was singing its praises. Fast forward a month – I kept on thinking while reading this collection (yes while reading it because my mind was ½ on the book, ¼ wishing I was doing something else, and ¼ thinking about what to say about this book given I had sung my praises on the previous short story collection of hers). Reading these stories was, to me, the equivalent of watching paint dry. In each story she went int...

I don't know why I never wrote a review on this before. It's terrific!!! I was comparing books with a new friend - whom I just connected with- and came to this book -It deserved the Pulitzer in my opinion!!!