Unaccustomed Earth

Stories

By: Jhumpa Lahiri

Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury, Ajay Naidu

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand.

In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself.

In "A Choice of Accommodations", a husband's attempt to turn an old friend's wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night.

In "Only Goodness", a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family.

And in "Hema and Kaushik" - a trio of linked stories and a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate - we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

©2008 Jhumpa Lahiri (P)2008 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Lahiri's enormous gifts as a storyteller are on full display in this collection: the gorgeous, effortless prose; the characters haunted by regret, isolation, loss, and tragedies big and small; and most of all, a quiet, emerging sense of humanity." (Khaled Hosseini)
"The author's ability to flesh out completely even minor characters in every story...is what will keep readers invested in the work until its heartbreaking conclusion." ( Library Journal)

gorgeous. every bit

as always, with this brilliant author, i was IN from the first minute. beautifully narrated

Unaccustomed Earth : Review

This is my 3rd novel that I have either read or listened to by the author Jhumpa Lahiri. Now i see a clear pattern in her writing style. Which revolves mostly around affluent bengali immigrants from Calcutta making their way into USA; primarily into the northeast part of the country in places such as Boston, New York or Philadelphia. I think it has a lot to do with her childhood days that were spent in these tri states popularly called the new england states. Ironically, most of her characters hold PhD degrees from famous institutions such as Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, MIT and so on. There is a good blend of eastern and western cultures in her stories. She tends to spice up quite a bit to enhance the romantic component in her novels, she has the uncanny ability to describe mundane events with great clarity and is able to keep her audience in rasp attention while connecting all the un seemingly incoherent dots into a storyline.

Beauty in life, relatable

Engrossed from beginning to end, largely because of how relatable the stories are, but also by the knack in storytelling that weaves identity, culture, the simplicity in the everyday life of interconnected family and relatives and lovers into layers of feeling and depth and what it means to be neither Indian nor American, completely.

Sarita brings Jhumpa's stories to life

I like to listen to books that are about different cultures rather than read them due to the correct pronouniations of unfamiliar names, places and things. I love Lahiri's writing, she brings depth to simple stories that we can all relate to, we all struggle with the same family dynamics and emotions. She deftly brings to life those emotions and challenges we all face. I usually dont like short stories, however, some of these relate to each other. Sarita's narration was excellent, Ajay's was not as good. I enjoyed every moment listening to this book!

My favorite recent book

5 stars are not enough for this collection of short stories, whose effect is hard for me to describe. The landscape of these stories is the middle class life of first generation Americans (adolescents and adults) and their Bengali parents. The events in their lives seem strikingly ordinary: no different from those that any of us may have experienced. And yet, the way that Lahiri conveys the characters' pleasures, desires for human connection, losses, secrets, and nostalgia are the real subject of these stories. My favorite stories were the three inter-related tales centering on Hema and Kaushik. They know each other as children; have a brief, but distant re-acquaintance as adolescents; and re-connect with a profound love as adults. You might want to listen to this book in private. Like me, you might occasionally find your eyes getting moist as you listen. Superb narration, by the way.

a lovely listen

The situation of 2nd generation Indian-Americans is Lahiri's department. The situations, the voices seem so authentic. And she writes like a dream

wonderful reading by narrators.

it felt like reading a collection of short stories that finally became a novel at the end. interesting stories that give you a glimpse of the Indian diaspora's experience as imigrants, and 2nd gen descendants. Ending was also unpredictable.

Wonderful!

Lovely. As an ABCD, I finally found a writer who captures the experience of being a first-generation Indian in America.

Compelling audiobook

I started listening to this and realized I read the book two decades ago. But the audiobook was still riveting with great narrators who bring Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose to life.

More about the same.

Although it's very well written and performed, this book doesn't add anything different from the other Ms. Lahiri's books I've listened before.