Interpreter of Maladies
1 journaler for this copy...
I first came across Jhumpa Lahiri in the New Yorker then read this collection of short stories and her novel the namesake. Both her short stories and novel are strong. Her characters are normally very deep and you are pulled into their events - even the mundane ones.
More about this book (from Amazon.com):
Jhumpa Lahiris heroes are Asian and American, they live in India, Pakistan, London and the U.S., and they eat (and painstakingly slowly prepare) delicious, spicy and flavorful food. Many of the stories deal with emotions and life situations which, although they happen to be experienced by Indians and Asian Americans here, are truly universal - the slow and unspoken death of a marriage ("A Temporary Matter"), prejudice against the unknown, particularly when it comes in the form of an illness ("The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"), the frustrations of a life of unfulfilled promises ("Interpreter of Maladies"), and the multilateral deceptions of marital infidelity ("Sexy"), blunted by the trappings of middle class materialism (again, the title story).
Most of Lahiri's Asian American protagonists belong to the "intellectual" upper middle class suburbian population of Boston and other East Coast cities. While on the one hand this is a plus, because that is the author's own background, too, and therefore a segment of society she can describe from personal experience - which also allows her to make these characters particularly accessible - it on the other hand provides for the story collection's one deficiency; in that it renders her portrayal of Asian Americans (whether recent immigrants or second- and third-generation U.S. citizens) unnecessarily unilateral, to the point of bordering on stereotype - more precisely, the Indian version of the stereotypes generally associated with this part of society. Nevertheless, most of Jhumpa Lahiri's often unlikely heroes are portrayed in great depth, and many of them with a lot of sympathy for their humanness and shortcomings. In the best sense of her adopted role as an interpreter of her protagonists' maladies, it is this delicate understanding and empathy which ultimately carries the tone in Lahiri's writing and which makes her reader want to listen, and to come up with his or her own interpretation of each of these stories.
THIS BOOK WAS RELEASED AT THE NYC BOOKCROSSING OCTOBER MEETUP
More about this book (from Amazon.com):
Jhumpa Lahiris heroes are Asian and American, they live in India, Pakistan, London and the U.S., and they eat (and painstakingly slowly prepare) delicious, spicy and flavorful food. Many of the stories deal with emotions and life situations which, although they happen to be experienced by Indians and Asian Americans here, are truly universal - the slow and unspoken death of a marriage ("A Temporary Matter"), prejudice against the unknown, particularly when it comes in the form of an illness ("The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"), the frustrations of a life of unfulfilled promises ("Interpreter of Maladies"), and the multilateral deceptions of marital infidelity ("Sexy"), blunted by the trappings of middle class materialism (again, the title story).
Most of Lahiri's Asian American protagonists belong to the "intellectual" upper middle class suburbian population of Boston and other East Coast cities. While on the one hand this is a plus, because that is the author's own background, too, and therefore a segment of society she can describe from personal experience - which also allows her to make these characters particularly accessible - it on the other hand provides for the story collection's one deficiency; in that it renders her portrayal of Asian Americans (whether recent immigrants or second- and third-generation U.S. citizens) unnecessarily unilateral, to the point of bordering on stereotype - more precisely, the Indian version of the stereotypes generally associated with this part of society. Nevertheless, most of Jhumpa Lahiri's often unlikely heroes are portrayed in great depth, and many of them with a lot of sympathy for their humanness and shortcomings. In the best sense of her adopted role as an interpreter of her protagonists' maladies, it is this delicate understanding and empathy which ultimately carries the tone in Lahiri's writing and which makes her reader want to listen, and to come up with his or her own interpretation of each of these stories.
THIS BOOK WAS RELEASED AT THE NYC BOOKCROSSING OCTOBER MEETUP
