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2008 Book Reviews

 

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Rating:

****

 

(Highly Recommended)

 

 

 

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Family

 

There are eight stories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection titled, Unaccustomed Earth, which is also the title of one of the stories. That phrase came from Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” The characters in this story are typically Bengali-Americans, and Lahiri develops each one with great care and fine writing. Often, the connections of family provide the grist for the tension in these stories. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of the story titled, “A Choice of Accommodations,” pp. 84-86:

 

From the outside the hotel looked promising, like an old ski lodge in the mountains: chocolate brown siding, a steeply pitched roof, red trim around the windows. But as soon as they entered the lobby of the Chadwick Inn, Amit was disap­pointed: the place was without character, renovated in pastel colors, squiggly gray lines a part of the wallpaper's design, as if someone had repeatedly been testing the ink in a pen and ulti­mately had nothing to say. By the front desk a revolving brass rack was filled with tourist brochures about the Berkshires, and Megan grabbed a handful as Amit checked in. Now the brochures were scattered across one of the two double beds in their room. Megan unfolded the cover of a brochure to reveal a map. "Where are we, exactly?" she asked, her finger trailing too far to the north.

"Here," Amit said, pointing to the town. "There's the lake, see? The one that sort of looks like a rabbit."

"I don't see it," Megan said.

"Right here." Amit took Megan's finger and drew it firmly to the spot.

"I mean, I don't get how the lake's supposed to look like a rabbit."

It had been a long drive from New York and Amit was in the mood for a drink. But there was no minibar, and no room ser­vice. The two double beds were covered in flowery maroon quilts, and across from them, a wide dresser held a television set at its center. A small paper pyramid sat on a square table between the beds, listing the local cable channels. The only pleasant feature in the room was a cathedral ceiling with exposed beams. In spite of this the room was dark; even with the curtains to the balcony drawn apart, all the lights needed to be turned on.

They were here for Pam Borden's wedding, which was to take place that evening at Langford Academy, a boarding school where Pam's father was headmaster, and from where Amit had graduated eighteen years ago. There had been an option to sleep, for twenty dollars a person, at one of the Langford dorms, empty now because it was August. But Amit had decided to splurge on the Chadwick Inn, which was slightly removed from campus, and offered a pool, a tennis court, a restaurant with two stars, and access to the shaded lake in which he'd been taught, as a teenager, to kayak and canoe. Talking it over with Megan, they'd agreed to drop off the girls at her parents' place on Long Island and book a room for both Saturday and Sunday, making a short vacation out of Pam's wedding, just the two of them.

Amit unlocked the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony, a strip of cement containing two plastic chairs. The Northeast was in the middle of a heat wave and even up in the mountains it was sultry, but the purity of the air, with its sharp scent of pine, felt restorative. He was unsettled by how quiet it was. No little girls' voices calling out to one another, no repri­mands or endearments coming from Megan. The car ride had been the same, Megan asleep, the backseat empty even though he kept looking in the rearview mirror, expecting to see his daughters' faces as they dozed or quarreled or chewed on bagels. He sat down now in one of the chairs, which was not very comfortable. He felt cheated. "I can't believe they charge two hundred and fifty dollars a night for this," he said.

"It's crazy," Megan said, joining him. "But I guess they can get away with it, given that we're in the middle of nowhere."

It was true, they were in the middle of nowhere, though he did not feel the same way. He'd known, without having to review a map, which roads to take after exiting the highway, remembered which direction the town was in. But he had never been to this hotel. His parents had not stayed here for parents' weekends; when Amit was at Langford they had lived in India, in New Delhi. They hadn't made it to his graduation, either. They'd been planning to, but Amit's father, an ophthalmolo­gist at one of Delhi's best hospitals, was requested to perform cataract surgery on a member of Parliament, and so Bengali acquaintances of his parents' from Worcester attended in their stead. After graduating, Amit had not kept in touch with his Langford friends. He had no nostalgia for the school, and when letters came seeking alumni contributions or inviting him to the succession of reunions, he threw them out without opening them. Apart from his loose connection with Pam, and a sweatshirt he still owned with the school's wrinkled name across the chest, there was nothing to remind him of those years of his life. He couldn't imagine sending his daughters to Langford—couldn't imagine letting go of them as his parents had let go of him.

He looked out at the hotel grounds. A pine tree growing directly in front of their balcony obstructed most of the imme­diate view. The pool was small and uninviting, surrounded by a chain-link fence, with no one swimming or sunbathing on its periphery. To the right were the tennis courts, concealed by more pine trees, but he could hear the soft thwack of a ball fly­ing back and forth, a sound that made him tired.

 

While developing characters expertly, Lahiri then paints them into settings that are described with just enough exposition to make them come alive for readers. Unaccustomed Earth presents fine writing by a writer who has mastered the short story.

 

Steve Hopkins, November 20, 2008

 

 

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The recommendation rating for this book appeared

 in the December 2008 issue of Executive Times

 

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