On Thursday, July 2, Lemuria’s book club “Atlantis” will be discussing Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2008 publication of her second book of short stories: Unaccustomed Earth. For her first short story collection titled Interpreter of Maladies, this accomplished internationally known Indian writer, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Many readers will also remember reading her novel The Namesake which was make into a movie in 2003.
In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri creates interestingly developed characters, who live in the United States, whose parents are from India. In the first short story actually titled “Unaccustomed Earth”, Lahiri presents a recently widowed man who visits his grown daughter’s home in California and plants a garden with his three year old grandson. As the daughter inwardly debates whether to ask her father to move in with her and her husband and child, the reader learns on the sly about the new love that her father has made on international vacations. The ironic twist at the end is delightfully welcomed by the reader. Subsequent stories, “Hell-Heaven” and “A Choice of Accommodations,” both set in the east, especially in and around the New York City locale, deal with the native Indian culture and how it mixes with modern day urban styles, mores, and customs, both in the setting as well as in the characters’ inward thoughts. A master at the contained, yet fully developed short story, Lahiri has the power to grab the reader, throw him into a setting and into intricate character relationships as if the reader had been involved in a novel instead of a twenty or so page short story. From my Lahiri reading so far, I would call her a master of irony.
Come join us in the newly renovated lobby of Banner Hall just outside of Lemuria’s front door, next Thursday, at 5:15 p.m. as we book clubbers have fun discussing Unaccustomed Earth. If you can’t join us this time, come on Thursday, August 6 for a lively discussion of Ethan Canin’s America, America.
-Nan
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