Picked this up to read while on vacation next week. The author won the Pulitzer Prize for a recent collection of stories, so I have high hopes for this. Here it is nestled with some red Russula mushrooms. So many russulas! Alas, I was looking for chanterelles for dinner.

The story is a good portrayal of the experience of first generation immigrant children, I think. It follows the life of a Bengali lad growing up in America. There's an interesting tension between being American while at large, but something else at home with family. The writing style is charmingly blunt, and the novel lays out Gogol's life quite unsentimentally. His life long issues with his odd name reflect his deeper struggles with identity. It's a book that's hard to put down.

I read this mostly on the long, long flight home from Hawaii, with my toddler sleeping on the floor at my feet. Now there are no mushrooms here at all, for it is dry, dry, dry. Our stream is reduced to a few trickling puddles containing rather desperate fish and green-headed frogs with no place to hide. Still, it's good to be home.

After languishing almost a year on the shelf, this book is off to Philadelphia to get read by bi-lingworm, who offered me an Oliver Sacks book in exchange. However, I was dreadfully slow replying, so she prepared the book to send to a friend in (of all places) Ithaca. We'll see if we can work out a way for it to visit me while it's here in town. What fun!

Mailed May 25, media mail.

Got it in the mail today - can't wait to read. Thanks, Ebumu! I hope your book has reached Ithaca by now as well - I will contact my friend about the exchange :)

RELEASE NOTES:

I can't decide if this is a good book or not. I think Lahiri is more of a short story writer - there wasn't quite enough plot to really drive and shape this novel. Also, the characters were so similar to me that I found it kind of boring! The character is riding Amtrak on the East Coast, and so was I while reading...

Released in a plastic holder on the wall of tourist brochures, Gate H at Union Station (Amtrak), Washington, DC