Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
(Knopf) $25
After the unparalleled success of both Interpreter of
Maladies and The Namesake, I was braced for Unaccustomed
Earth to disappoint. Jhumpa Lahiri has earned the right to relax a
little, throw out a stinker filled with lazy prose and creepily mixed
metaphor, where virginity clings like a barnacle to the racehorse
thighs of an ugly Bengali duckling.
But thankfully, Unaccustomed Earth is as absorbing as its
predecessors, and Lahiri’s prose continues to be thoughtful, measured,
and unexpected. As in her previous works, this collection of short
stories focuses on the lives of transplanted Bengalis, portraying the
tensions and unacknowledged burdens that weigh on generations of
families raised in radically different environments.
Her talent is for capturing the intricate bonds of loyalty and
resentment present within families of every cultural background. The
premises of these stories are simple—a widower visiting his
daughter, a couple’s first weekend away from their children—but
the absorbing way she examines even the most petty or mundane reaction
of her characters speaks to readers’ experiences. “[Amit] felt the same
resentment that often seized him after he cleaned up the kitchen and
bathed Maya and Monika and put them to bed… tonight nothing censored
his peevishness.”
Even Lahiri’s description of a vitreous eye clump is poetic, and
neatly captures the thematic sense of loss that is present in each
story: “[The eye clump] did not affect his driving, or his
picture-taking. And yet if felt like an invasion of the part of his
body, the physical sense that was most precious: something that
betrayed him and also refused to abandon him.” Just like my goddamned
family, the reader concludes. Unaccustomed Earth is a quick,
engrossing read. It’s the kind of book that makes you sit up a little
straighter and swoon, simultaneously.
