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| Unaccustomed Earth | 
 enlarge | Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Category: Book
Buy New: $27.99
New (5) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $18.46
Avg. Customer Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 1115805
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0676979343
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780676979343
ASIN: 0676979343
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: NEW
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| Customer Reviews:
 Unaccustomed? Not quite.. May 23, 2008
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
Unaccustomed Earth is in fact just the opposite of its title- far too familiar, too full of the typical.
The voices of her characters in this book melt completely into the Namesake, or The third and final continent (from Interpreter of Maladies). All her stories seem to involve the same people placed in slightly variant situations, and her words, 'planted and re-planted for too long' in the same soil of culturally confused, educated Bengalis, fail to flourish.
Overall, it's not something I'd recommend to fans of earlier works by her.If you want to read a good Jhumpa Lahiri- try the first collection of short stories -Nothing else she's written so far come close to it.
 Unaccustomed praise? July 8, 2008
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
...not by today's standards! I have read this author's earlier work and actually enjoyed some of the stories in her collection from a few years back. But deserving of a Pulitzer? In all fairness, I must say that it seems as though one must now be ethnic and from a Third World country to get any literary recognition in this fair United States these days. I'd say this might be a good thing if these writers were really coming from difficulty and struggle. But that is not the case with these ethnic immigrant writers of today. If one is as privileged as Ms. Lahiri has been, (and there are many), you will go to the correct top tier Ivy League schools, which will give you correct entry to the publishing circle elite. Let me just say that I welcome varied experience; I am all for different perspectives-but what's missing here is the grit of life. We can't help but see that Lahiri's dramas are rather predictable, shallow and simply not constituting the very stuff of which great fiction is made.
To wit: the greatest writers, to me, never entered an MFA program or Ivy League type of school. I think this is true today as any. Could you imagine Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Dickenson, Gogol, Austen, Whitman, George Eliot et al, coming out of the precious Iowa School or any other assortment of MFA programs? I think not. What constitutes such a lustrous and exquisite rendering of life is life itself. And those great writers lived it. Sad to say this no longer seems to be the case. And our expectations are so lowered as a result of it.
 Dazzling Stories August 18, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
The short story is a more perfect form than the novel. Every word, every sentence is important. Novels sell better, but the short story satisfies in a way that the novel cannot. I marveled at Lahiri's artistry, how she employs language in a unique way. She does not dazzle with incandescent prose, but her honest humanity shines forth in her writing. I had never heard of her before I started this book, but her stories moved me in a deeply personal way. I encountered emotions that I have felt myself, but never articulated. This is the mark of good literature.
 Is it just me, or do Lahiri's (typically Indian-American residents of the northeastern US) characters tend to have a PhD? April 17, 2008
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
Recent Brooklyn transplant to a Seattle suburb near Lake Washington thirty-eight-year old Ruma (attorney-at-law), a twelve weeks pregnant stay-at-home mother of a three-year-old, lives with her non-Indian husband (MBA) who is away on business. Her father (PhD in biochemistry), who recently lost his wife and embarked on a series of group tours during which he became involved with a Bengali woman (PhD in statistics), stays with his daughter as a sort of vacation from vacationing. But the story of their relationship is overshadowed by unusual plot choices in statement or occurrence. Unlikely although not impossible (I looked them up): her mother's odds defying cause of death, the chances of taking a day trip to Victoria, B.C. with a youngster (over four hours one way), the fact that her exceedingly capable father can't locate himself a post office, and that he is forced to quit gardening one due to the presence of mosquitoes. As well, he writes to a friend (p 50) "no rain here [in Seattle] in summer." Equally ridiculous are Ruma's ruminations related to her three-year-old son. She complains that he (p 10) "would throw himself without warning on the ground" and, not having told him about her pregnancy, "was convinced he'd figured it out already." And although the adults use their hands to eat traditional Indian food, he's not allowed because: (p 22), "this was something Ruma had not taught him to do." She even laments her father's grandfatherly care, complaining that (p 38), "He had not paid this sort of attention" when she and her brother (a Fulbright scholar) were growing up. Thankfully, things get better when the author moves to more familiar territory.
Hell-Heaven, narrated by an Indian-American girl, is about an intelligent Bengali man (studying engineering at MIT) who is welcomed into her family and acts like an uncle to her. The girl's married infatuated mother becomes jealous of his relationship with a non-Indian student (of philosophy, parents are professors). In Choice Accommodations (my least favorite), an Indian-American man (managing editor of a medical journal, his father, an ophthalmologist) returns to the town where he went to an all-male boarding school to attend the wedding of the daughter of the school's headmaster. His non-Indian wife (an M.D.) accompanies him. Only Goodness (my favorite story because of its utterly imperfect characters) follows the relationship between Indian-American siblings: a young man's descent into alcoholism and the guilt-ridden, successful sister (masters in International Relations, Economics, her husband, an India born Englishman, has a PhD in art history) who believes she started him on that path. Nobody's Business, told from the perspective of a PhD candidate in Literature, tells of his infatuation with a 30-year-old Bengali girl (majoring in philosophy at NYU) and her Egyptian commitment-phobic boyfriend of three years (a Harvard Middle Eastern history professor).
Part Two contains three related stories. The first, Once in a Lifetime, is narrated by one of two recurring characters, a 13-year-old girl (her Dad has a PhD), who, in 1981, is forced to give up her room for a month for the other recurrer, a 16-year-old boy, and his parents (Dad has a PhD in Civil Engineering), who plan to move back to the States. The last time they had seen each other was four years previously when her mother held a going away party for his family. Her mother is disappointed in the apparent change (for the worse) in his mother's behavior. The story ends with the revelation of a family secret. The second, Year's End, picks up a couple of years later, this time from the young man's view. He visits at Christmas and tries to fit in to a new family situation. The final story, Going Ashores, alternates between the lives of each of the two characters. She (a PhD) is visiting Rome while awaiting her wedding, an arranged marriage (to a physics professor at Michigan State, PhD). He (college grad) is also there. They meet unexpectedly through a mutual acquaintance and reestablish a relationship.
Overall, the stories were excellent. I especially liked Only Goodness and those about Hema and Kaushik (except that the first was written as if Hema were speaking directly to Kaushik directly - and vice versa for the second). Unaccustomed Earth, although perfectly titled, is not as good as Interpreter of Maladies, but far better than The Namesake. Also good, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
If you have read the first two books, you'll realize that this one is marked with predictability, repetition and sameness. May 31, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Despite being a prolific writer, Lahiri fails to offer something unique and new in her third book. All her stories are marked with predictability, repetition and sameness. Probably her imagination is limited to her own Bengali immigrant experience. Nevertheless, she has an innate ability to handle complex emotions and this sustains interest in her stories.
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