Jhumpa Lahiri

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.

Interpreter of Maladies

The first short story in the collection, A Temporary Matter, showcases Jhumpa Lahiri's mastery of subtle and consistent imagery, illustrating the fluctuations of Shoba and Shukumar's relationship with a visually-represented thru line of temporality. Adjusting the lid of a steaming saucepan can both capture the current tensions of the marriage and foreshadow the arc of the storyline. I also find the mundanity compelling. There is nothing spectacular about Shoba and Shukumar's marriage; it is about as exciting as you would expect from a middle class 30-somethings couple in late 20th century Boston, but Lahiri more than manages to embed flickering apprehension and uncertain anticipation in the narrative. Shoba and Shukumar both have the power to restore and destroy each other, and Lahiri keeps the reader's breath held through descriptions and dialogues that are both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

Lukas

I didn't give up on you. Now it's your turn.

This exchange does not carry the same oomph it does without 11-year-old Eliot's internal reflections (replaced here with a [...] because it's too long to quote), but damn. Needed to bookmark this scene. It's tooooo good.

"Eliot, if I began screaming right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?"

"Nothing. I am only asking if someone would come."

"At home that is all you have to do. Not everybody has a telephone. But just raise your voice a bit, or express grief or joy of any kind, and one whole neighborhood and half of another has come to share the news, to help with arrangements."

[...] "They might call you," Eliot said eventually to Mrs. Sen. "But they might complain that you were making too much noise."

Interpreter of Maladies quotes

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