Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Knopf
Year: 2008
Price: About $18.95
Lahiri's “Unaccustomed Earth” is spell bounding. Eight short stories woven so tightly together, it would take a great deal of stretching, bending or breaking to get them to unravel. Lahiri's strength - among many of them as a story teller - lies is the character development of the protagonists, their realities, anxities, dream and behavior.
Finishing this collection of carefully wrought and longish short stories was bittersweet. Lahari is a master of character study, and it's difficult to believe she's still a young woman. Her descriptions of her multigenerational, mostly Bengali immigrant, characters felt intimate and usually sympathetic. The details may be Indian, but the emotions are universal. I can't think of any writer today who can so closely render the complicated interactions of adults and their offspring.
Two things are remarkable about these stories. One is the way she moves around from one point of view to another quite easily so that we see a situation from the standpoints of several characters. Lahiri switches smoothly in and out of various perspectives until she has rendered a little gem of a tale.
The second remarkable characteristic is the way she ends a story. It's not the classic O Henry ending where there's a twist that catches you by surprise and may not make sense entirely but what I think of now as a Lahiri ending, a devastating insight that takes your breath away. There's not an unsatisfying conclusion in any of the eight stories that make up this collection.
Rafael Acero
Acerca del Autor:
Hi, my name is Rafael Alejandro Acero Hernandez, and I'm an alcoholic. I don't drink beer. I'm addicted to chocolate. I'm a bit bipolar and every once in a while obsessive/ compulsive. I have a really short attention span. I don't believe in labels, I'm not defined by what I do or by who I do- for that matter. I'm a writer, an actor, a dancer, BUT nothing is better than being a professional a$$hole. Soy un chilango incomprendido, y como tal- valemadrista a morir.
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri 
