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Unaccustomed Earth

By Jhumpa Lahiri

(46)

| Paperback | 9780747599791

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Book Description

An outstanding new collection of stories that explore the heart of family life and the immigrant experience, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake

Beginning in America, and spilling back over memories and generations to India, Unaccustomed Earth fol Continue

An outstanding new collection of stories that explore the heart of family life and the immigrant experience, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake

Beginning in America, and spilling back over memories and generations to India, Unaccustomed Earth follows new lives forged in the wake of loss.

These are stories in which deeply sympathetic characters reach pivotal moments in their frayed relationships and are forced to navigate their way in unfamiliar landscapes. In the title story the death of a mother leaves a space neither daughter nor husband knows how to fill. In 'Only Goodness' a younger brother's spiralling alcoholism threatens to destroy his loyal sister's family. And in a trio of linked stories we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one memorable winter, share a house in suburban Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until they are brought together years later in a chance meeting in Rome.

With moving compassion Lahiri traces a series of transformations: weariness into hope, secrets into sacrifices, and grief into unforeseen love. Eight luminous stories - longer and richer than any she has yet written - explore the heart of family life and the immigrant experience, taking us from America to Europe, India and Thailand. Infused with eloquent warmth and lyrical simplicity, Unaccustomed Earth confirms Jhumpa Lahiri's status as a storyteller of unrivalled empathy.

Critics

  • Unaccustomed Earth

    This wonderful volume of short stories is bound together by the theme of the immigrant’s experience: the perennial challenges of adapting; steering a path between cultures; children adopting the mores of their new homeland and moving away from their ... (read full critics)

    bookgroup published on Thu, 9 Jun 2011

  • The ghosts that haunt a family

    Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri Bloomsbury £14.99, pp352 Fiction is nothing but a narrator's intelligent attention to the play of human feelings, but in the stories of Jhumpa Lahiri, that attention takes a distinctive, refined form. Her character ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • 3 people find this helpful

    what a writer

    Lahiri writes about the world she knows - but even if you aren't from the Bengahli American enclave, it is a world you know too - just learning to deal with one's past and present, family history, etc. This collection of short stories is particularily interesting as they are linked thgrough some of ... (continue)

    Lahiri writes about the world she knows - but even if you aren't from the Bengahli American enclave, it is a world you know too - just learning to deal with one's past and present, family history, etc. This collection of short stories is particularily interesting as they are linked thgrough some of the characters. Beautiful use of language, attaching characters. Wish it wouldn't end..

    Is this helpful?

    Gail Paris said on Jan 25, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

  • SPLENDID

    The best novels I have ever read! Emotional, profound, moving. The author takes, guides you to feeling and emotions and you can't but follow. Silence and incommunicability are the leading topic, you car really touch the silences, understand them and have to accept them. The author leads you to peaks ... (continue)

    The best novels I have ever read! Emotional, profound, moving. The author takes, guides you to feeling and emotions and you can't but follow. Silence and incommunicability are the leading topic, you car really touch the silences, understand them and have to accept them. The author leads you to peaks you would't even think of and then push you down into a dark hole of the end. It takes time to start the new novel, time to think over, to metabolize, to sympathize with the characters, with their feelings, their reasons, their stories.

    Is this helpful?

    Vioca said on Jun 8, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

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