Unaccustomed Earth: Final Review

Judging by the comments (or lack of comments, rather) that I've seen so far on Unaccustomed Earth, I'm afraid I have to conclude one of two things:

Either 1) no one else has found the time to read Unaccustomed Earth with me, or 2) no one is reading this blog.

To preserve my vanity (a precious and fragile thing), I'm choosing to believe number 1. So I've decided to write this final review of Unaccustomed Earth under the assumption that you haven't read it and that you still could. This means I'll leave out details that could potentially spoil the book for you. This also means I'll use this space to hopefully convince you to dig up a copy of this book and read it.

Because it's brilliant. It's magnificent. It's literary manna from heaven.

Here are three reasons you should read Unaccustomed Earth.

1. Lahiri is remarkably sensitive to the delicate nature of family relationships. Fathers, daughters, sons, mothers, spouses. You name the familial role, and chances are Jhumpa Lahiri examines how that role is delicate and oppressive and beautiful and important. Here's an example, one favorite passage in which a man, Amit, contemplates what he calls the "disappearance" of his marriage: "Wasn't it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one's life with, after making a family with that person . . . that solitude was what one relished most" (113). This strikes me as a poignant observation - that solitude emerges as important only after we've committed our lives to others. And the book is full of just such observations.
2. Lahiri is remarkably sensitive to the delicate nature of cultural assimilation. In Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri began exploring the implications of globalization and cultural clashes, and she continues that examination in Unaccustomed Earth. Those who've never experienced life in a foreign world should read Lahiri to gain a grasp of what these cultural clashes can do to individuals, and those who have experienced a foreign world should read Lahiri simply to see the cultural tensions they've experienced captured so powerfully.
3. Finally, Lahiri accomplishes all of this through quiet, almost whispered prose. I've long believed that our modern obsession with constant noise is damaging today's writing. Too few emerging writers know how to slow down and really turn an idea over in their hands. Lahiri, on the other hand, writes stories that are meant to be digested in bits and pieces, slowly. Again and again as I read this book, I found myself encountering a sentence that made me stop, close the book with my finger still in it, and think. That's a rare thing, and it's a good thing.

So that's it for Unaccustomed Earth. If you'd like to read along with me in April, the book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I'll post my first thoughts on it (and hopefully get some of yours) on April 10th.

Unaccustomed Earth WWADY Rating = 9/10

Unaccustomed Earth: A Simple Question

It's "Featured Book Friday," which means it's time to talk about this month's featured book Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.

So far, I'm loving this book. As I mentioned last week, I'm impressed with Lahiri's handling of strained and delicate family relationships. Her sensitivity to these kinds of relationships, whether they exist between husband and wife, parents and children, or even traditional and "adopted" family members (as is the case in "Hell-Heaven"), is acute and reveals Lahiri's gift as a careful observer of human relationships.

I'm hoping those who are reading along have finished the five stories in part one, because I'd like to ask a fairly generic question about them. Here it is:

Which of the stories in part one is your favorite and why?

As for me, I like "Hell-Heaven" because I think the narrator's mother is fascinating. She's desperately lonely (and we don't learn just how lonely she is until the very end), and yet she maintains her image of a dutiful wife. Her pent-up sadness is so endearing and so disturbingly real.

Anyone else?

Unaccustomed Earth: First Impressions

To make discussing WWADY featured books simpler, I've decided to dedicate one day of the week (Friday) to our monthly featured books. I'll refer to future Friday posts as "Featured Book Fridays," and you can expect a post about WWADY featured books every week. This way, if you're reading along, you'll know when to get online and share your thoughts. I hope that this will make it easier for you follow along and share your ideas with the rest of us.

So, on with business. Here are my first thoughts about Unaccustomed Earth. I look forward to hearing yours. I'll limit my observations to the first story in the book to keep myself from spoiling any more of the book than I have to for those who haven't started yet.

The main point that's struck me so far is this:

Jhumpa Lahiri addresses the complexity of human relationships as well as anyone I've read.

I was particularly struck by two passages in "Unaccustomed Earth." The first is when Adam, Ruma's husband, is urging Ruma to see if her father would like to move in with them. Adam questions why it's hard for Ruma to approach her father by saying, "He's your father. You've known him all your life," which is followed by this truth:

"And yet, until now, she had not known certain things about him."

Lahiri understands just how difficult it is to communicate honestly and really get to know other people -- even family members. Most people, I think, are fiercely private, keeping their innermost fears and doubts and wishes and desires secret from even those they love the most. After all, how well do we really know our parents or children or friends or even our spouses, should we be lucky enough to have these people in our lives?

In Ruma and her father, Lahiri shows us two people who do, in fact, care for each other but who aren't really able to open up and communicate honestly. Ruma is unable to tell her father how she feels about her mother's death, her life in Seattle, her role as a stay-at-home mom, and most importantly, the care she has for him. Similarly, Ruma's father has his secrets. He can't tell his daughter he's fallen in love with Mrs. Bagchi even though he's had many chances to do so, and he takes great pains to hide the postcard he's written to Mrs. Bagchi. He even writes it in a foreign language just in case Ruma happens upon it (though it's contents are pretty mundane).

The second passage that struck me is on page 53. Speaking of Ruma's father, we read:

"He did not want to be part of another family, part of the mess, the feuds, the demands, the energy of it."

I'm struck here by what Lahiri is willing to say. True, families are beautiful, natural, good things. True, most people love their families and lest anyone doubt it, I love mine and trust that you love yours.

But having said that, I'd bet cold, hard cash that you've occasionally felt like Ruma's father. I'd bet virtually anything that you've had moments when you became tired of the baggage families sometimes bring. That Ruma's father decides to enjoy his family at a distance and on his own terms seems perfectly understandable. He's found an independence in being alone, and he's unwilling to give that up. This doesn't, however, make him at all unlikable. In fact, I think it makes him human.

That's all for this week. Next week, I'll include all of the stories in part one in my post (the first five), so if you want to avoid having any stories spoiled, read at least that far.

And now it's your turn. Please feel free to add a comment and chime in. I'd love to know what you're thinking.

March's Featured Book: Unaccustomed Earth

It's been a while since I've posted about February's featured book So Brave, Young, and Handsome, so my next post (coming hopefully Friday or Saturday) will be dedicated to that.

Today, however, I need to announce the featured book for March so you'll have time to track it down and read along with us.

March's featured book will be (. . . drum roll, please) Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (big cymbal crash).

If you're not familiar with Jhumpa Lahiri, here's some background. Unaccustomed Earth was published in 2008, and it's Lahiri's third book. Her first, a collection of short stories titled Interpreter of Maladies, came out in 1999. It explores in sensitive and soft prose cultural assimilation and the impact globalization has on the individual. (Lahiri is a bit of a world traveler -- she's of Bengali Indian descent, was born in London, and currently lives in Brooklyn.) Interpreter of Maladies won a Pulitzer -- not bad for a debut book.

Her second book, a novel published in 2003 called The Namesake, was recently made into a movie. I've neither read the book, nor seen the movie, so I'll refrain from commenting on it here (but I will add it to my Netflix Queue).

The New York Times review of Unaccustomed Earth has this to say: "The fact that America is still a place where the rest of the world comes to reinvent itself — accepting with excitement and anxiety the necessity of leaving behind the constrictions and comforts of distant customs — is the underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri's sensitive new collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth.” (See the complete review here).

Lahiri is brilliant, and even a few non-readers I've known discovered Interpreter of Maladies and devoured it ravenously.

We'll begin our discussion of Unaccustomed Earth the first week in March, so get your book today.