I am so happy that Charlene introduced me to Unaccustomed Earth by Jumpa Lahiri. It is an amazing book of short stories that touched me deeply through Lahiri’s well written characters and incredible story telling. It’s not a very thick book to begin with, but it took me about two days to finish it here in India, as I couldn’t put it down. I loved absolutely everything about it, but mostly I loved that I could relate to almost all of the stories which brought out laughter and tears.

I am sure it is the same in many immigrant families, but I got a chuckle out of one the stories when Lahiri wrote about a brother and sister. “For years, they had been compared to other Bengali children, told about gold medals brought back from science fairs, colleges that offered full scholarships. Sometimes Sudha’s father would clip newspaper articles about unusually gifted adolescents—the boy who finished a PhD at 20, the girl who went to Stanford at 12—and tape them to the refrigerator.” It reminded me that my dad always clipped news like that out of the papers and kept them, and would refer to them every now and then. In addition, my father, to this day, tells me all the time how children of other Lao parents are doing. Mostly he tells me not to compare, but to show how other Lao parents and their children are over the top sometimes and want to show off to the community that their child is doing better than yours. For instance, he told me about one family whose daughter apparently is an accountant making $200,000 straight out of university. Uh huh. Really? Or the son or daughter whose parents bought them a really nice car simply because they attended university. My father would always tell me he would tell them “Oh, my children don’t really have anything.” He proudly displays my master’s degree on his living room wall, however. 🙂

A quotation from the same story also reads: “Sudha had struggled to keep her place on the honor roll, to become salutatorian of her high school class. But Rahul never lifted a finger, never cracked a book unless it appealed to him, precocious enough to have skipped third grade.” My dad always noted that Jack was always the natural smart one… he could pass a test without studying whereas while I was not struggling, I had to work at getting As. I read a lot, and put in a lot of effort to get the perfect essay, or memorize the quadratic equation. In university, I discovered that I could still get Bs and not work as hard, so that’s what I did. Whatever.

This story ends sadly, however, as the brother, Rahul, becomes an alcoholic and is no longer part of the family. After Sudha gets married and has a child who she leaves with Rahul one night after trying to reconcile, she finds her son alone in the bathtub while Rahul is passed out in another room with an open bottle of alcohol. In the story, Sudha says it was difficult to cut him off. Everyone has their family dramas, and I won’t go into mine here (saving it for the book ;)) but it reminded me of my own, older brother, Bairon. Since he left home at age 18, he has been in and out of my life, sometimes for shorter and sometimes for longer periods. I once told Ru that if we did not hear from him, it probably meant he was doing okay, because when we did, he would always have crazy stories of what he had been up to. I haven’t seen him in a little over three years and when I did see him that last time, it was not under good circumstances. He didn’t come to my wedding, which I was very sad and disappointed with, as I was looking forward to seeing him. But Lahiri’s story prompted me to write him an email a few weeks ago, to which he has not yet replied.

In any case, there were other stories that touched me as well, from one of the character’s mother dying and her father being far away (I worry about my dad often, now that he’s retired and getting older) and the same father travelling after his wife’s death (my mom always wanted to travel but my dad always said, ‘Wait for the children to grow up’ and she died before they could travel together), to another character who happens to be a photojournalist who travels the world on assignment and his mother dying of cancer. The other stories that I couldn’t directly relate to engulfed me through Lahiri’s powerful writing which I love when I’m reading books.

The stories were short and always left you satisfied but wanting more. Any of the stories could’ve been expanded I think to be standalone novels, for which I would happily read as well. If you’re interested in an emotional roller coaster ride, this book is for you. If you’re interested in captivating and wonderful story telling, this book is for you. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and can’t wait to read The Namesake. I will also have to add Lahiri’s new book, The Lowland, to my sabbatical reading list! Thanks again, Charlene, for introducing me to Lahiri.

–Bea