Books : Unaccustomed Earth

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307265739
ISBN: 0307265730
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: April 01, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: April 01, 2008
Studio: Knopf
Sales Rank: 222

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Editorial Review:

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 keeping all 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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Haunting and Dazzling Stories
As always, Lahiri's short stories resonate with me in a truly hauntingly romantic way. Her prose and character development, while some complain are overdeveloped and stagnant or lackluster, are stunningly beautiful in my opinion. Yes, it is true that she 'recycles' bits of her characters into different stories and even novels, but the way in which she does so doesn't alienate the reader, it (at least in my case) makes them fall in love with the now familiar characters. Her writing is transcendent ... Read More

Rating:

- Dazzling Stories
These are careful, closely observed stories that the author illuminates with telling details: the way a daughter reminds a widower of his dead wife, or the silences that tense the tenuous link between parent and child. These stories focus on relationships, how they start, and how they end, but mostly about the moments and gestures that mark their stages. These stories read easily. Still, I went back and read them again, for the details that Lahiri sprinkles, like jewels hidden in a corner bookcase. ... Read More

Rating:

- I enjoyed every story
There are no happy endings , yet it is not all sad.I completely enjoyed it.

Rating:

- Beautifully written
I LOVED this book of short stories. I read several reviews that Interpreter of Maladies was better, but I didn't feel this was the case. I thought this was even better; very beautifully written!

Rating:

- Excellent book
This is a lovely collection of short stories that stays with you long after you've read the last page. This is Lahiri's best by far...same simple yet searing language, but the observations are so true they take the wind out of you.

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