Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth

manya

the way young girls often fall in love with women who are not their mothers

Stories

a collection of short stories where each one perfectly captures complicated feelings and thoughts around the various relationships in your life. Every time I think I won’t be able to relate to her characters, she swoops in with a line that makes you remember you’re not alone. 

Samantha Karpovck

Fernando Bolaños

Conmovedor, escrito de una manera tan bella y melancólica. Los fuertes sentimientos de los personajes de amor, búsqueda de identidad, abandono, familia te dejan sin aliento.

Stephanie Honour

Vikram Sreekanti

The stories were all quite good and well-written, and as with all her stories, really relatable perspective on being Indian-American. My only complaint is that after reading all 8 stories in a row, the themes/conflicts/settings all start to blend together.

From the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, eight dazzling stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father who carefully tends her garden–where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a couple’s romantic getaway weekend takes a dark turn at a party that lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a woman eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories–a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love and fate–we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one fateful winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome. Unaccustomed Earth is rich with the author’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is the work of a writer at the peak of her powers.

Udit Desai

Never read anything that better encompasses a first generation Indian’s relationship with parents as both grow older in North America

The stories of Unaccustomed Earth focus on second-generation immigrants making and remaking lives, loves and identities in England and America. We follow brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, in stories that take us from Boston and London to Bombay and Calcutta. Blending the individual and the generational, the exotic and the strikingly mundane, these haunting, exquisitely detailed and emotionally complex stories are intensely compelling elegies of life, death, love and fate. This is a dazzling work from a masterful writer.

Melody Izard

As I was finishing this incredible collection of short stories I was also in the grips of the accounts of the tsunami in Japan. The stories in this collection began to creep closer and closer together as I recognized I had been reading about some of the same characters without realizing it. And the waters of the Thai and the Japanese tsunami merged into one big wave.

Pranav Mutatkar

Nowhere near as good as her others especially since she is one of my favorite modern writers. The first story is quite good though, other than that this can't touch her first short story collection or namesake imo

nisha 

enjoyed it for the most part. kept getting attached to the characters for every end to be so abrupt :/

Michelle Xu

I had to read this novel for my Asian American Lit class. The book is a collection of short stories, each depicting the life of or a segment of the life of a few different Bengali-Americans. This book was extremely raw and real. Out of all the novels I had to read in that class, this was possibly the most depressing--not because everything bad happens to all her characters, but because it is so real. The loneliness that stems from growing up as an Asian American (in this case, Bengali-American) and how their confusing childhood between cultures extends into their adult years as married or single middle-aged men and women. The other books I had to read might have been depressing and sad because of death, or torture, or poverty that comes with immigrating to the United States. This book, however, is much more cosmopolitan. Most of the characters come from somewhat affluent backgrounds. They are not the first generation immigrants but the second or third. They are typically Western-educated and have already assimilated into Western culture. Life for them isn't a walk in the park, however, as they still struggle with the feeling of loneliness and isolation due to conflicting cultures. Most of the stories allow readers to glimpse into how the characters lived as children and teenagers (typically pushing away their Bengali roots and culture) and then how the characters live as adults (some continue to push away culture, others try to be closer to that Indian culture they once condemned, others try to make amends with family, while others try to work on their lives with their spouses). Overall, this book was an incredibly insightful read. As a college student, I felt that parts were unrelatable to me--yet I could imagine my future with the same feelings and emotions as Lahiri's characters.

Shantesh Patil

This book is a collection of stories about Indians who have moved away from their motherland. It's about their lives and trials and tribulations and most of the stories have no happy endings. Still the author's writing is exceptional and I read through the book faster than I expected too.

Pratiksha  Wadhwa

This book is a collection of eight short stories divided into two parts. The first five stories- Unaccustomed Earth, Hell-Heaven, A Choice of Accommodations, Only Goodness and Nobody's Business are distinct, while the last three are interrelated and around Hema and Kaushik.
Unaccustomed Earth presents us the world which is not accustomed to the changes happening every moment in life.The stories take us on a journey around the world, dealing with universal issues like marriage, divorce, cultural-conflicts, death, etc. It seems that all the characters are based on real people and the reader instantly relates with them.

Having read a few of her books before, I think I really like Jhumpa Lahiri's style of writing. Most of her stories are based on immigrants, predominantly Bengalis, who have moved to America.They give you a bitter-sweet but honest exposure to human's nature  I would highly recommend this book to someone who is looking for short stories.

Unaccustomed Earth

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