Eventually, someday,
Jhumpa Lahiri is going to have to stop writing exclusively about Bengali expats
adapting to America, or she'll risk falling into a rut. But that day clearly
hasn't yet arrived. Following her novel The Namesake (and its attendant film
adaptation) and her Pulitzer-winning debut anthology Interpreter Of Maladies, she returns with Unaccustomed
Earth,
another collection of short(ish) fiction, largely about Indians in America,
generally in relationships with Americans, and dealing with their disconnect
from their ancestral land, their first-generation immigrant parents, or
themselves. Over six stories—some approaching novella length—she
engages in slow, ruminative character studies. The premises aren't as clever as
the ones in Maladies, but the writing is more mature and expansive, and while the
broad parameters may sound similar, each story unfolds into its own distinctly
flavored creation.
In the title story, a
Bengali woman married to an American man observes her 70-year-old father
getting to know her 3-year-old son; as they bond, she worries that her widowed
father will expect to move in and be cared for—or that he won't. The
book's tenderest and most inexplicable story, "Nobody's Business," has an
American college student quietly nursing a crush on his Indian housemate, but
saying nothing as her love life becomes increasingly complicated. In "A Choice
Of Accommodations," an Indian man brings his American wife to the wedding of
his old flame, staged at his old prep school.
And so forth and so on,
with Lahiri tracing the details and minutia of ordinary lives, underlining the
cultural expectations and tensions that move them, but shaping stories that are
more about them than about their countries of origin. Unaccustomed Earth is less specific about
Bengali customs and traditions than Lahiri's previous work; the shadow of India
falls into her characters' lives, generally in the form of their parents, but
heritage is just another element in the stew, rather than the main ingredient.
The stories are gentle and observational, with few twists or moments of sudden
impact; they stretch out lazily like cats in sunlight, taking their time with
more assurance than Lahiri's previous work. The results are often sleepy and
meandering, and can take some time to get into, particularly since it's rarely
clear where Lahiri is going until the journey is nearly over. But each one
gradually deepens, much as Lahiri's work is gradually deepening over time.