Interpreter of Maladies

I bought this book after having read the Namesake, because I had enjoyed it so much. I was not disappointed. Each of the nine stories in this book offers a brief glimpse into the narrator's life. The stories offer no grandiose defining moments, but rather a very simple series of affecting moments, most of which center on an Indian protagonist. An American boy's relationship with his Indian nanny; a travel guide in India shares his imaginative subtext as he spends a day with an Indian-American family; etc. The narrator did a wonderful job on this project. I do wish there had been a bit longer break between stories...perhaps with a little music to aid in the transition. I also wish I could have smelled and tasted all of the food in this book! I realized, that during the two weeks I listened to this book, I'd been drawn to cook Indian food twice! (Quite out of the ordinary for me!)

The stories in this book were amazing. They gave such a beautiful view into the Indian culture. I longed to know the sense of community and comraderie that the author makes so integral a part of these stories. As the stories ended I was sad to end my relationship with the well-drawn and intriguing characters.

The reason I rated this audiobook only 3 stars was not the novel itself, but the narration and production of the audio. I found the narrator's style to be distracting and at times downright annoying. Short interludes of music separated the book into equal sections, but this distracted from the flow of the novel because they often came in the middle of a story and at times in the middle of a character conversation.

Dispite the poor quality of the audio production, I would recommend this novel for its wonderful characterizations and fascinating stories.

Since there are so many reviews of the book itself, I will review the narration of the audio version.

First, I was distracted by the narrator's style. Her odd, unnatural, and often nasal enunciation of words was annoying. The amaturish and undulating style of her reading the sentences made me wonder if the author picked a friend or family member who wanted to break into the business. This narrator has no business doing this work. Additionally, the narrator certainly did not capture the emotions of the characters.

Secondly, the producers decided to add music to signify the ending of one "chapter" and the beginning of antoher. However, the chapters in the audio version did not coincide with the stories in the book. The music breaks only served to separate the book in to 6 equal parts, which was in the middle of a story.

While the narrator did read at a decent pace, the up and down vocalizations, the inability to capture sentimental or sad emotions and her odd enunciations made this narration one to skip.

Lahiri's Pulitzer prize winner only gets better the more often in is read.

It's fair to call Lahiri an American writer; therefore there's nothing wrong with having a non-South Asian American as a narrator. However, I do wish Ms. Novak had done a little more research about the pronunciation of Indian words (Dixit, Laxmi, Lucknow, etc.).

This is probably a good book, but the reading in terrible. First off all the reading is very choppy, she cuts all sentences into little phrases, the phrases are read a bit too fast, with long pauses between them, its OK for about 5 minutes or so, then gets very annoying. But the worst is the reader's voice, it is so very, very, very prissy, and she sort of gushes with 'pleasedness' at the most random moments. She does this once in the sample, so listen carefully, because the sample is the lest prissy 5 minutes of the whole book. The style would probably be OK for a trashy romance novel, but this book has a dark side, and the reading style completely destroys this. Also as other reviewers have noted, the book is cut up into chapters, that don't align with the stories.

Don't get this as an audiobook.

I guess I should have expected a collection of short stories to lack plots, but it made it hard to finish the entire collection. Lahiri has a wonderful way with words and she has great insight into the particulars of people's lives that are often overlooked, but I need a little more plot to each story to satisfy me.

I loved the stories, the languages and the narration. Only issue is the odd musical breaks and short intervals between the stories.