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Unaccustomed Earth | 
 enlarge | Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.50
You Save: $11.50 (46%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 25
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st North American Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307265730
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307265739
ASIN: 0307265730
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keepingall to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister 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 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 Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 Latest by Jhumpa Lahiri May 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is to my mind the best so far from this talented writer. It is different from the short story collection in her first book. The stories (some of them linked) are longer than in the "Interpretation of Mladies". It contains more varied set of situations--all very absorbing and well done---than the novel "Mamesake".
 Continuing Gulf Between Two Cultures May 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In this brilliant book, Lahiri sustains her control of characters and weaves tight stories. Her plots and characters move effortlessly through each vignette. Once again we meet the structured Bengali culture and their American children who never seem to completely belong in either world.
The stories emphasize intermarriage between a Bengali and an American but their coming together seems natural and no definitive blame is placed on troubled intermarriages. I had originally thought the stories wold be linked but only two were related directly.
Arranged marriages often make life easier . We learn about the strict, almost inflexible, Bengali families who come to America and desperately retain their sharp divide of women's place and the man's responsibility in a marriage. Not so when a Bengali girl or boy marries an American. Many of the alliances seemed anguished and incomplete. I didn't feel any of the characters could find contentment.
What held every story together, whether it was a drunken husband or a grieving wife missing her Bengali mother, was the demanding emphasis on education. The Bengali expected their American son or daughter to become dstinctively educated at the very best Ivy schools to attain optimum success in their fields. This theme seem the overriding reason for coming to America. The Bengali wives remained tied to their Indian cultures and continued their obsequious responses to their husbands. They remained isolated and out of touch. Not their children who desperately tried to find a place for themselves in our rich country and liberal culture.
This was a wonderful book; she is one of the best authors. We are thrown into the plots from the very first sentences. She reminds me of Anne Tyler, taking simple people who live mundane lives, but who are quite complicated and intense.
Marvellous! May 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the prologue of this book is a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne that is simply astonishing in its disasporal beauty: "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." And so begins this collection of equally astonishing short stories by Lahiri. As much as I enjoyed her first collection of short stories (Interpreter of Maladies), I was rather put off by her next novel: The Namesake. I felt that the latter was a depressing and foreboding warning against seeking out unknown lands and new adventures. But maybe I was mistaken, maybe Ms. Lahiri is, in fact, celebrating this diasporic journey. The short stories she has weaved in this book are perfect. The characters are so well developed that you feel a sense of loss when the story is done. The first few stories are self contained, and the last three are tied together; all written with Ms. Lahiri's precise sense on how to complete a sentence in the most descriptive way using the least amount of words. In the last set of stories, Ms. Lahiri uses the guise of fiction crossing over into real world calamities as the protagonist perishes in the 2004 Asian Tsunami (this literature device when used wisely is strikingly creative -- Nelson DeMille was the first author I read who used it in Night Fall; in his case, 9/11 being the profound event.) As is usually the case with Ms. Lahiri, the stories in this book are centered around the Eastern US seaboard, with Calcutta providing the anchor that roots the character's lives once they seek their fortunes in unaccustomed earths. This book was simply fantastic. I cannot recommend it highly enough!
strong writing, haunting stories May 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This collection of short stories is much more even and consistent than the author's prior "interpreter of maladies" and the characters more engaging in certain respects than 'the namesake'. While Lahiri's dispassionate style is almost clinical, the emotion she feels for her characters & their predicaments comes through in her elegant prose. While some of the plots can feel contrived at times, the best efforts here such as "Heaven-Hell" and "Unaccustomed Earth" are haunting and will stay with you for a while.
Quintessential Lahiri May 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
After I finished reading this book, I didn't want to read anything else for a while. It was that good; I read it in a day. Her writing is infectious. While I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, I think that she outdoes herself in Part Two of the book, where she tells essentially the same story from the points of view of two people, Hema and Kaushik. One reviewer commented on the melodramatic aspect of her writing and while I admit that it seems she does go a bit heavy on it in this collection, it's what she does well and it works. I find the sameness and familiarity with which she writes comforting. With a Jhumpa Lahiri book, one always knows what one is going to get and that is what, in my opinion, makes her books so great.
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