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)

Love the author

I would listen to anything Jhumpa Lahiri wrote. This book was very good, although I liked Interpreter of Maladies much more.

Devastating.

Each story was its own pocket universe, but the series of connected stories at the end were beautifully laid out, riveting, and devastating.

Hated it

I had had enough of angst ridden Bengali's at the end of this.

Wasn't for me

I think if I were of this culture it may have more meaning. To me it was boring and lacked anything to make me keep listening. I am only half way through and I will not finish this book.

All the LONG stories tend to blend together

I initially enjoyed the first few stories in the book, both because they were something different, as well as getting a first glimpse into mixed Indian-American culture.

But as other reviewers have noted, the stories eventually seem to all sound the same, and by the end I couldn't wait to be done with this book.

I was further disappointed because most of the characters are miserable (to various degrees), and two of the tragic endings rely on completely implausible circumstances -- the resolutions come across as lazy, since the reader can imagine plausible circumstances that could have yielded the same results.

The opposite of "Couldn't put it down!"

I wish I would have read Isabelle's review before wasting a credit:
"It was so uninteresting to me that I hardly could go to the second story...In fact, I didn't and will not try listen to the rest of it."
As I just did the same thing. I'll keep it on my Ipod when I run out of things to do, I just might go to book 2.

lacking something

well written but lacking something more realistic. got through four of the stories. Couldn't finish.

Great book, highly recommended

Excellent book!

Loved it!

Great read.

A collection of similar stories badly compiled

The stories in this book have no proper relation to the chapters. Some stories span contiguous chapters. Others are interrupted by chapters containing unrelated stories. This, plus the fact that chapters have no headings, and are differentiated by numerals only, mean that you can’t easily work out what to read next. The first time. I came across the problem was when I thought a story had ended as a new chapter was next in sequence but with completely different characters and plot. I listened and after I finished the new story, a chapter with the continuation of the one two chapters below followed.

The writing is good but the same old theme of the Indian diaspora as seen from families in India makes it feel as if it’s really a number of rewrites of the same story.

Disappointing