I couldn't sleep after I finished "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri. It is her third book and second collection of short stories. Her first, "Interpreter of Maladies," won a Pulitzer. "Unaccustomed Earth" exceeds the standards she set in her earlier work. The collection is in every way wonderful and devastating. I was kept awake by my disappointment that the stories had ended and by a desire to remain linked to the clarity of her descriptions and to the struggles of her characters.
Every one of her stories has aspects that are universal. Need is often articulated or expressed by her characters: a need for connection, a need for recognition, a need for belief. Her characters struggle to find their way through the unfamiliar terrain that life consistently presents.
Lahiri revisits transplantation often in her work, but it is not only the uprooting of traditions and cultures that she explores. She scrutinizes convictions and bares ideals to their bones. Her tracings of her character's lives are a gorgeous combination of detail and circumspection. Although Lahiri's stories are saturated with descriptions, she is never ornate or verbose.
Familial ties run deep for Lahiri's characters. Even in instances when the offspring have distanced themselves, as they are bound to, from the values of their parents and their histories, there is a connection that runs thick between them. It is revealed in a daughter's dependence on her widowed father as she enters into motherhood and in deep-seated responsibility a sister carries for her alcoholic brother.
Lahiri examines the lives of Bengalis who have assumed American mannerisms, have married Americans or found solace in the embrace of someone else whose parents extracted their roots from the soil of India for another life. Every one of these choices is complex and Lahiri firmly evokes the ache of both the wrong and right decisions. There is no one exempt from error. And as much as it might be sought, by the reader and by the perpetrator, absolution is not always bestowed.
There are eight stories in this collection. The first five are connected only in their similar themes. The second half is focused on two characters, Hema and Kaushik.
The final story is the one that lingers longest, which is perhaps due to the extended history the reader possesses. Hema and Kaushik are seen moving individually through different stages of life. All three stories can stand alone, but reading them as a series heightens her effect.
"Going Ashore," the final story in the collection, is not rooted in India or the United States. Hema and Kaushik are in Rome and Lahiri's evocation of the city is a creation of wonder in itself. The impact of the story is somehow heightened by the ancient background. The devastating practicality of human relationships is shattering. Lahiri writes with a firm hand and she does not ignore the reality of comfort and security, the logical decisions that do not make for ecstasy but do make a life.
There was a brief moment when I was angry with the current of the final story. Hema and Kaushik seemed headed for a contrived ending, a horrible cliché. But Lahiri handles the predictable with such grace that I was plunged again into awe.
She reads and transposes the currents of sentiment so well that I was left feeling both bereft and filled with the bitter sweet pleasures of this life. Her simultaneous production of such dissonant sentiments is astonishing and will keep more than avid fans clinging to her final sentences.