'Unaccustomed Earth' by Jhumpa Lahiri - Book Review

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of today’s most acclaimed writers, having won a Pulitzer Prize for her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her placid, poetic writing is back in another collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth. Though the rhythm of the stories grows repetitive, by the end of the collection the reader will find herself enthralled, and at the mercy of Lahiri’s emotional passages.

Jhumpa Lahiri has achieved the nearly impossible: she is one of the most respected authors of our time while also being one whose books top the bestseller lists. She made her mark with a Pultizer-Prize-winning debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri returns to the short story format in Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of short stories that deal with loosely-related stories: families from the Bengali state in India who have moved to America to pursue careers and raise their children.

Each story seems to feature parents who bring their children back to Calcutta each summer to visit relatives; each story features children who struggle to conform to their parents’ traditional expectations as well as the cultural demands of an American adolescence. Loss marks the families Lahiri describes; they cope with this loss in alternately quiet and dramatic ways.

Each story in Unaccustomed Earth is exquisitely written; Lahiri’s placid prose is a pleasure to read. In some ways the very quietness of this writing can serve to lull the reader, however, and given the recurrence of certain themes and plot points, the book feels like it’s covering well worn territory by the last few stories.

It’s worth sticking it through to the last story, though; "Going Ashore" strikes the perfect balance of shocking events retold in a quiet, poetic tone that’s amazingly moving.