Book Review: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

I have spent too many evenings in hotel rooms in various Asian cities, wasting my time watching television shows in languages I don’t understand. Then again, I have found that I don’t need to know the native tongue to recognize a recurring theme in the local dramas and soap operas.

These shows always revolve around unhappy parents – stern fathers and grieving mothers – who constantly try to manipulate and interfere in the lives of the younger generation. I can’t translate a single word of dialogue, but just the looks on the faces of that aggrieved mom and exasperated daughter sum up decades of inter-generational conflict. If looks could kill . . . no Bollywood actress would live past the age of twenty-five.

This is the world that Jhumpa Lahiri captures so evocatively in her latest collection of stories Unaccustomed Earth. Her characters move freely from country to country, continent to continent, job to job, but the psychological ties of family and culture are not so easy to leave behind. Each of her narratives is both firmly embedded in the here-and-now of the Indian ex-pat experience, but also full of the resonance of the inescapable past.

The parents invariably have expectations, typically unrealistic ones, as they move to the West yet want to resist its inevitable influence on the next generation. They demand that their children excel and succeed in their new setting, but not become shaped by its values. Even small things – a glass of Johnny Walker (a brand which appears a dozen or so times in this book, and is always a symbol of decadent Westernizing), make-up, an accent – are scrutinized and judged. And every now and then a big bombshell drops: a child wants to date, or even marry, someone who is not Indian.

It is to Lahiri’s credit that she can work so many variations on these simple themes. She has a deft touch in delineating characters and shaping scenes. Above all, she is able to build tension in relationships between contrary characters, while deferring conflict, allowing subtle changes to play out gradually. Her tales are psychologically rich without the baggage of the so-called psychological novel. Everything in the story moves lightly and at a measured pace, even when the subject matter itself is heavy: a brother’s alcoholism, a step-brother’s betrayal, a jilted lover’s anguish and revenge.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is the author of Delta Blues, The History of Jazz and, most recently, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool.

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